Rococo Art: definition, characteristics, works and artists
The rococo was a European artistic movement of French origin that was characterized by its cheerful style and hair tasted for excessive decoration. He manifested himself in painting, architecture, decorative arts and sculpture.
Rococo art developed at the beginning of the 18th century, a period of transition between baroque and neoclassical art. It is now shared as baroque or interesting by the profusion of details, difference is given to or substitute its solenity and drama for prazer and entertainment.
Such was the desire for entertainment that, according to researcher Michael Levey, the rococó did not respect the Church or the State. Love, sensuality and daily life were more interesting topics than spiritual glories.
The word rococó sees the thermos rocaille, a kind of garden decoration based on the use of shells or sex, very popular in Italy and France during the 17th century. Both or use of these motifs as to semelhança us efeitos alcançados levaram that or thermo rococo fosse applied to this style.
Characteristics of Rococo Art
Contrary to baroque art, rococo art is characterized by being cheerful, celebrating life, giving space to humor, grace and mild eroticism. It can be said that it was, de facto, the expression of a social class that fled from the tedio through an enthusiastic art, without transcendent or didactic pretenses.
Funny and festive character
Rococo art was before all a style that sought to express grace and joy. Emborished or rococo fosse ornamented in decoration, its atmosphere sought to be bright and show enthusiasm.
humor and malice
Rococo art is the expression of an elite that has fun. For this reason, they have a large dose of humor and malice that suppresses any attempt at solitude. By isso, or rococo também expressa or relaxamento da label.
Topics without moralizing or didactic pretension
The favorite themes of the Rococo were sentimental adventures, pastoral dinners, the amusements of the idle elite and domestic life. But, despite the sugary appearance of two themes, they have a connection with the experience. Religious, mythological or historical themes do not appear out of the ordinary, but out of existence they are stripped of their solitude.
Ficaram for after moralizing dinners, didactics or dinners that show power. Each topic passes the filter of grace, do practice and daily life.
veiled eroticism
Art was nourished by a veiled eroticism, both in its forms and in its themes. For some artists, mythology was a hiding place to justify or develop their eroticism, so as not to suffer criticism from intellectual elites.
Or rococo was an art attentive to details and excessive ornamentation. The artists, designers and architects will enrich the decoration of the works with elements as exuberant as they are imaginative. I am not surprised to find elements of oriental cultures such as fauna, flora and all kinds of motifs.
Use of pastel and white tons
One of the ways that rococo artists found to trace grace and fun was to change a palette from earthy and dark tones to pastel and white tones. It was applied both in painting and in architectural decoration, with grace and sensuality.
A liberated art gives its function of propaganda
Or rococo libertou the art of its propagandist role. Art was no longer at the service of ecclesiastical or absolutist causes, and was also influenced by thematic and stylistic freedom. Art no longer needed to be or a vehicle of a “truth”, it needed to be serious.
A Rococo painting
Rococo painting represented a triumph of Rubenism over Poussinism.
Rubenism refers to the current of colorist painters inspired by the Flemish Baroque painter Pedro Pablo Rubens (1577-1640), who often prevailed over or over.
O poussinismo refers to the current that privileged or neglected others, influenced by the French painter Nicolás Poussin (1594-1665). Or colorism was characteristic of two Rococo painters.
His placid and graceful character contrasted with the drama of the baroque. In France, court life began to revolve around entertainment and banalities, such as love affairs, games or everyday life, all reflected in painting.
This cheerful spirit quickly permeated the European courts, but each country or adapted to its particularities.
Rococo Painters
Antoine Watteau (1684-1721). Watteau was a painter from a Flemish city that had been annexed to France. He was the first artist to give in to the concerns of the idle elite. But it was also the one that deu “humanidade” aos personagens. Among his most important works are Peregrinação à ilha de Cythera (1717), A escalado do amor (1717); Venetian Festival (1719).
Jean-Baptiste-Simeon Chardin (1699-1779). He was a self-employed French painter, thanks to the financial resources of his wife. He was particularly concerned with representing domestic life. Among his most important works are O menino do pião (1737), A jovem governanta (1740) and A bênção.
Francois Boucher (1703-1770). French painter who worked under or under the patronage of the Marquise de Pompadour, favorite of King Louis XV. He dealt with many mythological, pastoral and idyllic subjects with great exuberance. Among his most important works are Portrait of Madame de Pompadour (1759); Reclining Young Woman (1752) and Diana in the Bath (1742).
Jean-Honore Fragonard (1732-1806). He was a French painter who made hedonism, eroticism, exuberance and an intimate atmosphere the most representative signs of his painting. Among his most important works are The Swing (1767), The Blind Hen (1769), The Lock (1779), The Stolen Kiss (1788).
Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (1696-1770). Italian painter widely recognized in Europe, developed or religious theme. He also executed mythological and everyday themes. Some of his best-known works are: Translation of the Holy House of Loreto (1743-1745), Afrescos da Residence of Würzburg (1752-1753), Youth with a Papagaio (1760) and Afrescos in the Royal Palace of Madrid ( 1762). -1766).
William Hogarth (1697-1764). English painter who placed in practice the clear resources and cores of rococo, but ridiculed the social conventions, mainly those of the elite. Among his best-known works are: The Four Times of the Day (1736), The Career of a Prostitute (1732), and Marriage a-la-mode (c. 1743).
Thomas Gainsborough (1727-1788). English painter who was characterized by portraying people in graceful attitudes. He concentrated on a small local aristocracy. He highlighted his interest in the landscape, which he always uses as the background cloth for his paintings. Their jobs include: Mr. and Mrs. Andrews (1749), The Blue Boy (1770), and Dr. Ralph Schomberg.
Rococo Architecture
Rococo architecture is characterized by being austere in exterior finishes, much richer and more exuberant in interior decoration. The interior spaces are smaller and treated with greater intimacy, thanks to the use of delicate and smooth forms.
The interior decoration stands out for its ingenuity and imagination. Golden washers were on the order of the day, at the service of curved shapes with floral motifs, shells and all kinds of sinuosities. As cores were always bright and cheerful.
The French architect Germain Boffrand was responsible for the introduction of the rococó in France and was placed especially at the service of the monarchical order, having developed religious projects. He participated in projects such as Place Vendôme in Paris, or Conservatory of Versailles, or Hotel de Soubise in Paris and or Château de Lunéville.
The rococo aesthetic was highly valued in Austria and in the German states that were part of the Holy Roman Empire, both in religious architecture and in civil architecture.
Examples include the Vierzehnheiligen Basilica of Johann Balthasar Neumann and the Abbey of Ottobeuren in Bavaria. In Prussia, the construction of the Palácio Sanssouci in Potsdam under the direction of Georg Wenzeslaus von Knobelsdorff stands out.
In Spain, the preeminence of the baroque and the lack of artistic exchange with France and Germany mainly, will make it difficult to spread the rococo style.
For example, the decoration of the sacristy of La Cartuja de Granada, probably started by Hurtado Izquierdo and continued by José de Bada. To refer to still or Transparent of the Cathedral of Toledo, by Narciso Tomé. Finally, the façade of the Palacio del Marqués de Dos Aguas, designed by Hipólito Rovira.
Rococo Furniture
In this period, he was bred in a style called Louis XV, in attention to the dominant aesthetic taste at court. This tornou-se style is an international fashion.
A marcenaria was characterized by the use of varnish and bronze marchetaria. The most used motifs are floral.
In the same way, you are moving to be projected to remain undisturbed by two names in court, something that was not usual at the time. Isso trouxe con se or desenvolvimento da arte dos móveis stews.
rococo sculpture
Both autonomous sculpture and sculpture in the service of architecture have a non-rococo role. One of its most notable differences was the reduction of the colossais dimensions of the baroque.
Or rococo also sought to accentuate softness and delicacy not treatment of textures and movements. For sculptors mantive or interested in marble, porcelain was widely used.
Sculptures in gesso and wood also foram feitas. How much to color, when to apply, we maintain the tons paste to illuminate or environment. Among the most outstanding Rococo sculptors we find Antonio Corradini and Étienne-Maurice Falconet.
Antonio Corradini (1688-1752). He was an Italian sculptor who worked in the service of the court of Charles VI. He was known for the way he treated clothes, mainly or effect of transparencies. Some of his most commented works are: A Mulher Veiled (The Faith) and Modesty, also called A true veiled.
Étienne-Maurice Falconet (French, 1716 - 1791). He was one of two protégés of the Marquise de Pompadour. Some researchers give or study art as a figure of transition to neoclassicism. His works include: Menacing Cupid (1757) and Pigmalião e Galatea (1763).
Rococo Historical Context
The baroque dominated Western aesthetics from the mid-16th century to the long of the 17th century. They were times of religious wars and consolidation of absolutism.
In France, in the last years of the reign of Louis XIV, stability was achieved around no need for baroque ceremonies. Então, o Rei Sol saw us name a threat. At the end of his reign, he dispossessed nobility of his power, making you an idle elite.
Three events foram fundamentalis no impulse do rococo:
- to death of King Louis XIV;
- the influence of King Louis XV's favorite, the Marquise de Pompadour;
- or exchange of artists between the different European courts.
Or rei is dead. Alive or King!
As Louis XIV died, he moved from Versailles court to Paris, while Louis XV was waiting for the date of ascending to the throne.
In Paris, the names will come into contact with the most powerful economic elites and treasury officials. A few years ago, the forms of etiquette were being relaxed, according to the researcher Stephen Richard Jones in his book Introduction to the history of art: the seventeenth century.
Now that the names were idle and understood, it was necessary to maintain the interest of the court and provide new occupations. Little by little an answer will be found in art. Jones states that:
Rococo art was only to delight a rich society, really idle, for which or only sin it was to abhor.
When the young Louis XV took office, he renewed the ideas of clientelism in the hands of the private sector.
One of the most important patrons of the time was the king's lover, Jeanne-Antoine Poisson, Marquise de Pompadour, known as patron of the arts.
As a result, a market was created that, inspired by the artist Watteau, was interested in domestic life, in eroticism, in the celebration of life and in prazer.
More than anything else, he was interested in love affairs, or the best antidote to boredom. This moment gives history testemunhou to the mobility of artists between countries like never before. A new art - which left behind the transcendence of the baroque - opened the way in a large part of Europe.
Decline
In the middle of the 18th century, Enlightenment thinkers like Voltaire proclaimed the domain of reason and the measure of the country as common.
Or rococo lhes seemed an unacceptable excess. Accused of being superfluous, senão immoral, or rococo, it was associated with the decline of the Antigo Regime.
Under the influence of the Enlightenment, or architect Jacques François Blodel together with voices that disqualified the artistic style of the Antigo Regime. Ele então proposes a modernization of art that would accompany the growing republicanism not political debate.
As time or design, it triumphed over the core, under the command of philosophical and political thought, art turned to academicism, moralization and State propaganda. Assim born to neoclassical art.
You can also be interested:
- Art history: a chronological guide to understand the artistic periods
- Main works of Aleijadinho
References:
- Levey, Michael (1998): From the Rococo to the Revolution: Major Trends in Eighteenth-Century Painting. Barcelona: Edições Destino.
- Jones, Stephen Richard (1985): An Introduction to the History of Art: The Eighteenth Century. Barcelona: Editorial Gustavo Gili / Circle of readers / University of Cambridge.