Hi! This next video will cover the Rococo
and Neoclassical periods, and also cover ideas related to the
Enlightenment in art and also satire of the aristocracy. So, we start off with this Rococo style, which was extremely luxurious and
associated with the top "one percent" of French culture.,
so those in the aristocracy, those associated with
the King. It was particularly associated with the mistress Louis XV (not Louis XIV) -- Louis XV and her name was the Marquise de Pompadour [or Madame de Pompadour], so she was really a great proponent of this style, and had paintings of
herself created in this style. So, it's a luxurious artistic expression
of salon culture -- salon culture means people are gathering together in luxurious spaces in Paris people
are returning to the capital city. This
culminates in a style known as Rococo, coming from the French word for stone or pebble and
also for shell, so very decorative, very frilly, and it's kind of taking that Baroque style
to the next level. It appears in paintings and sculptures,
but also in interiors. It's considered a more
feminine style, so you see it in small delicate, decorative interiors. You see it in small decorative arts, as well, and then in architecture. So, let's look at an example of a Rococo painting. Starting off, we have one by
François Boucher, who was one of the key figures in the Rococo art movement. Just looking at this painting,
you can get a sense that these [paintings] were intended to be incorporated into
interiors -- interiors designed in that Rococo style. And a lot of times, the subject has
to do with LOVE -- so LOVE is the key theme in a lot of these images,
and they're pretty straight forward to understand -- they're not overly
intellectual; they're not overly complicated; it
relates to that luxurious and playful lifestyle that a lot of these aristocrats were leading because the monarchy had become an
absolute monarchy -- a lot of these nobles didn't have a lot to
do, so it reflects that playful lifestyle. So, looking
here, we can see, it's called "Cupid a Captive," so this
idea trying to disarm Cupid -- trying to remove some of
his power in order to keep him from
getting people to fall in love. So, you see Cupid here reclining. They're
basically tying him up, but not in a scary way -- they're tying him up
with ropes covered in flowers. And you see him
surrounded by three very lovely women, and they're also removing his arrows, so, that again, he can't shoot people -- shoot people with the arrows to make them fall in love -- It's in beautiful garden setting --
this idea that it's the kind of garden that you might encounter in a villa or a palace owned by one of these French aristocrats.
So it's somewhat similar, if we go back to that Bronzino [Mannerist] image, "The
Exposure of Lust" -- the one with Cupid and Venus, where you
see her disarming Cupid. But that one was so
complicated -- that one was very intellectual, and was owned by the
French king. it was intended for the French king François I [Francis I], but this is a much more straightforward, much more
friendly kind of image. Probably the most famous Rocco
image is the work by Fragonard, "The Swing" and you can see you have a woman here, who is swinging, and you see a man who's pushing her
here. So, again, a scene of leisure in one of these beautiful gardens that you
might encounter in a really upper class household. But
you see that she is having a secret meeting with her
secret lover or her boyfriend. And so you see him hiding
out in the bushes here, as she's being pushed on the swing, she's becoming more and more visible to him.
She kicking up her skirt and so that means that he
actually gets to look up her skirt. She's kicking her shoe to him, and the man who is her chaperone or escort -- who is trying to keep her out of trouble -- clearly has no idea what's going on.
What's nice is you have these little sculptures, who help you
understand the narrative. We know that the little putti there or little angel [or cupid] figures
going "shh, don't tell anyone what's going on." So, again, very overgrown,
and fertile and lush, speaking to ideas of love and fertility, but also just speaking to the kind
environments that people might have been familiar with and that are pleasing to the
eye -- pleasing visually -- this is a very happy, pleasing subject matter, but it's
important to keep in mind that in about twenty years the revolution will
get going -- this is the kind of lifestyle that most
French people are not living, and that they're going to start
objecting to. So what we start to see is more of a satire of the aristocracy, especially in England. So we see an
artist named William Hogarth, who develops prints and also a series of
paintings that satirize the aristocracy -- the
lifestyle that they lead. So here we see a work called "Breakfast Scene from Marriage à la Mode," which "marriage à la mode" in this case
means "stylish marriage" [not marriage with ice cream!] and he's poking fun at kinds of marriages that
aristocrats, or those those in that high-level -- what they
tended to have. So this was actually an arranged
marriage -- these are newlyweds and they're very grand house. But you
can see the house is a mess! There are chairs knocked over. The woman
has actually hosted a party the night before -- you can see the servant is exhausted. The candle has just been
blown out. It's burned all the way down. They've been playing cards. You can see
those on the ground here. The man, however, has been out on
the town, so he is just now returning. He's clearly
exhausted. He's not sitting up straight. He's reclining and looks like a mess. And you can see the dog is
actually sniffing at him -- sniffing at a bonnet in his pocket, indicating that he's been out canoodling
with another woman -- indicating that the marriage is already falling apart. And again she's
been hosting her own party, so they are already leading these very separate lives. And then we see the butler here -- or the man who runs their household, who clearly has brought them a stack of bills that they need to tend to, and neither of them want to deal with it. So, you can
see that the man is kind of going "I give up!" and he's running off to the side. And so you can see that, although this is a
very grand house, and although these people are very nicely
dressed, the whole thing is kind of a mess. Also commenting on the ancestry of this
family, you have a bust of one of their ancestors, and he has kind of a pig nose, speaking to the fact
that the ancestry doesn't matter -- it's kind of silly. Also you see there's that curtain
covering an image here and this would have been a reclining nude female, and these would have been covered
most of the time, and then when you maybe had friends over who were interested in seeing it -- maybe your guy friends -- you would open it up, or you would remove the curtain, so you could see what's underneath. This was part of a whole series, so there
were other scenes were eventually both of them end up dying, speaking to the fact that this was such a horrible marriage. So, also at this time, you have the
Enlightenment, which directly links up to the Revolutionary period -- this idea that people have more knowledge.
They feel more open to the ideas of democracy. The
idea of divine right goes away -- this idea that and God has given the ruler power.
People stop believing that and think "actually, the people give the ruler power." So, in
this case, you start seeing more scientific ideas being incorporated into art. We've seen previously ideas of the
anatomy being studied, but even more in this case, we're seeing more
knowledge, ideas of knowledge and science ending up in art. So, more rational
thought -- moving away from religion, beginnings of industrialization. We
have important individuals like Isaac Newton around this time. So one of the works that's
often seen as connected to these ideas of the
Enlightenment in this period is the work of Joseph Wright of Derby, who was
an English painter. And so we see "A Philosopher giving a Lecture at the Orrery," and you can see that this was
created in the 18th century. And you have a
philosopher here, and then you see a variety of people
listening, and it's done very much in a "Caravaggesque" style , right? So you have the tenebrism. You have the dark shadows, and the bright light. But in this case, it's not a divine light. It''s not the light of Christ or the light of God. In this case, it's more the light of knowledge -- literally in this case at the orrery, there's a lamp in the middle that
represent the sun, and so they're studying the movements in the solar system -- that's what he's giving a lecture about.
But if you think more symbolically, it's more a case of knowledge spreading and
that's what the light can represent. So I think this is a great
image showing that transition to the Enlightenment, as we're moving away from religion, as being essential focus in
art, and moving more toward interest in knowledge. I also think it's interesting there are all
these books in the background -- this idea that more and more people are becoming
literate, and more and more people are starting to
collect books. They're becoming a little bit cheaper with more printing technology developing. Okay, so next we have this Neoclassical
style. "Neo" means new, and so we're returning to an interest in classical
style -- that is the style of ancient Greece and
Rome. And I know you're probably thinking: "Didn't we just do this in Renaissance?" -- but, yet again, they're returning
to an interest in the classical period, but it's a
little bit different this time, so you have the discovery of
Herculaneum and Pompeii. They are starting to do more and more
archaeology in these areas, although it's not very scientifically done. And a renewed
interest in some of the subject matter that especially
relates to republics and ideas of democracy, and the importance of the state. So, that's very key. One of these artists is actually a female artist. We see the work of Angelica Kauffmann, and her work is very sweet. It relates
to women here, so that was probably deemed appropriate for a female artist, but also has a very
nice Neoclassical subject. This idea of family -- an important
moral message -- that was really key. So, this is called "Cornelia presenting
her children as her Treasures," and so you see a woman here presenting the
jewels that she owns, so she's showing off all of her jewelry as her
most important possessions, however, Cornelia is showing off her
three children, saying "you know, you may have these material
objects, but I have these children and they're my most important possessions" -- and these children will actually go on to do great things for the city of Rome, and, of course, Rome and the study of Rome was
really important for the development of this Neoclassical style. So, it's a very sweet image in terms of a women's most valuable possessions being her children, but the theme and the moral message fits really well in what some the goals were for Neoclassical painting. You can see the lines are very strict, very crisp and clean, the interiors are not overly done -- we are moving really far away from that Rococo
style. And this is what Neoclassical artists
will favor. It's a really different interpretation of the antique or the classical
period than what we saw in the Renaissance. And so that's a key idea as well. And the artists are really looking to
Poussin for most of their inspiration, as this style is developing. So, the
most important work from the Neoclassical period -- or one of the most important -- is the "Oath of the Horatii" by
Jacques-Louis David, who has important roles before the
[French] Revolution, during the revolution, during the time of Napoleon, so he is
very important throughout this period French painting. And so in
1784, this work was actually done for the King, and it becomes really a symbol of a lot of the ideals of the revolution. So you have these three Horatii brothers, who are going to fight three other individuals from another family,
the Curatii in Alba. So they've actually nominated three against three, so that the whole cities
don't have to go to war. And so these brothers are going to do it.
They're taking the oath -- this idea of city over all else -- the idea of city over family because in particular one would know
because this was a well-known story at the time, that one of his sisters was married to
one of Curatii -- so knowing that you were going to have to go kill
basically their brother-in-law if they were to win. And so these brothers will go off and do
that. They actually are victorious. One brother returns. The sister ends up being very sad
because she's lost her husband, and so he kills his own sister. So this
idea that all sacrifices must be made in order to achieve what's necessary for
the state. So this is the three brothers, the
Horatii. This is their father. They're taking the oath, and these are the women. They're are some clear gender differentiation
here -- just in terms of color, but also in line. The men are strictly defined very tall and
straight. The women are very curved over. You also have this definition of the
arches over here, dividing the composition into
three parts. You have that very austere Neoclassical interior, the Doric simple column, and a really nice perspective
scheme. And this is really a blockbuster of a painting. People waited in line to see it.
People really want to see this work, so it became very, very famous not only in France, but also in Italy. So, just a
few notes, about the [French] Revolution. This "Age of Revolution" is a forty-year
period from 1775 to 1815. It's a huge period of social and political upheaval. So, you have the American
Revolution, and then you have the French Revolution. Eventually, Napoleon actually comes in
as well, filling the power vacuum in France, after the chaos of the revolution. The
reign of Louis XVI [the 16th!] begins in 1774, and then have the American War of
Independence, you have abolition of feudalism in
France, you have the abolition of the nobility. Then you start using this guillotine , which is a quick way to start killing some of these nobles, and you eventually
have both Louis XVI and [his wife] Marie Antoinette executed. So, that's a big
change, obviously! So this reveals how
bloody the system had become at that time. We
have "The Death of Marat" and Marat was an important
figure in the Revolution. He actually with killed by a woman who was loyal to
the Crown. Her name was Charlotte Corday, and so he would
take these long baths for his skin diseases. And so we can see him here. He was in
his bath doing his work. And this is a work dedicated to his
death and that he was killed
by this woman. So it's by David, and he's saying that this is to Marat, from David in year two because they restarted the
calendar after the revolution. And he looks very much like a
Christ-like figure. The Neoclassical style was also picked up
in America, and we can see it with George Washington here, standing in contrapposto pose. He's
wearing his everyday clothes, so we're seeing him not as a man of war here because
he only took up war when absolutely necessary [see medal of the Society of Cinncinati]. And he didn't want to wear a toga or anything that made him look to
classical. He wanted to look like an everyday figure. That's where we will end! Yay! Congratulations!
