Rococo: The Flamboyant Late Baroque Period (Waldemar Januszczak Documentary) | Perspective

[Music] oh my word [Music] hey the rococo age occupied most of the 18th century it went from roughly 1700 to roughly 1790 or so you can't really be much more precise it's not a precise movement more of a tendency a tone an inclination rococco's reputation tends to be frilly and unserious when you think of rococo art you think of this don't you or this or this but it wasn't just frilly and pink rococo was all sorts of other things as well and what i want to do in this series is convince you of its wider achievements its punch its determination its intoxicating beauty [Music] yes it was frilly and pink at times but not always and never for nothing [Music] this first film is about the exciting impact of travel on rococo art [Music] that's why i'm stomping up this very long rococo staircase in germany towards that very lovely rococo church at the top travel was one of the great inventions of the rococo age of course people had traveled before but far fewer of them and not with the same crazy enthusiasm travel as one of life's most exciting pleasures was a rococo idea i've got three books here i'm sure you've heard of gulliver's travels jonathan swift published 1726. robinson crusoe daniel defoe published 17 19. and these little delights here 1001 arabian nights with aladdin zard alibaba translated and published in france in 1717. so that's three of the most famous travel adventures of all time and every one of them a rococo book [Music] so travel had a big impact on the rococo and that impact influenced art in various ways i'm stomping through germany with my trusty pilgrim stick because in rococo times pilgrimage became such a powerful creative force [Music] especially here in bavaria ah bavaria what a place great rococo art in every direction that's the nymphemburg in munich a fabulous rococo palace and in there lives a man who some think should be the king of britain this is him francis ii of england and scotland or as they call him here france duke of bavaria now he's descended from james ii the last catholic king of england who was overthrown by william and mary but james's followers the jacobites as they're called have never given up hope that one day the king over the water as they call him the rightful king of england and scotland france duke of bavaria will one day regain the english throne dream on all you jacobites it'll never happen [Music] the dukes of bavaria have always been much too catholic to rule britain in bavaria catholicism is the state's religion defended fiercely against the wicked protestants in the north and all this glorious rococo dotted about bavaria by its madly catholic dukes was aimed at that particularly energetic rococo traveler the pilgrim pilgrims were the duke's primary audience their spending bankrolled the entire rococo expansion pilgrim on the trail as a travelling money box [Music] and politically the more catholic bavaria became the less opposition there was to its catholic dukes so the protestants were shoved out sometimes brutally and the catholics were pampered enticed seduced by some of the most heady and exquisite architecture ever constructed this is vitzenhan in northern bavaria the basilica of the 14 holy helpers to give it its official title slap in the middle there they are the 14 saints who made this church an extra special bavarian destination all pilgrimage churches have something in them that attracts the pilgrims a reason to go there and vips and heiligan had 14 reasons the story goes that on the 24th of september 1445 a shepherd saw a baby crying in a field exactly here but as he stooped down to pick the baby up it suddenly disappeared later he saw it again this time with a red cross on its chest so he knew immediately it was the baby jesus the final time the baby appeared it was accompanied by 13 other babies and this time the baby spoke to the shepherd and it said we are the 14 helpers and we wish to erect a chapel here where we can rest so that's what happened the locals erected a chapel on this exact spot and the miracles began pilgrims began to flock here in their thousands and in this field by a river where previously there was nothing this great pilgrimage church was built i love the way religion can turn nowhere into somewhere what a power that is i mean this was just a field on a hill now look at it to build the new church they brought in an architect of genius balthazar neumann and advice and heiligan neumann gave us his rococo masterpiece [Music] a building that twists hither and thither across the cosmos before plunging down so dramatically to the great shrine at its center as for the pilgrims they couldn't have been better served when you came to vietnam one of these 14 saints was sure to help you so if you suffered from migraine like me you prayed to saint dennis here the patron saint of headaches and if you were having a baby there was saint margaret to help you with your childbirth saint for every occasion all this is spectacular that's obvious but why is it rococo and what does rococo actually mean [Music] well i don't know if you remember series i did about the baroque age and how i explained the difference between the renaissance and the baroque with two pearls now this pearl here the round one that's like the renaissance perfect precise what about the baroque well baroque comes from the portuguese word barroco which means a misshapen pearl so that's like this one blobby organic bulging so that's the renaissance and that's the baroque but what about the rococo well they're a coco that was like the arrival in art of the entire sea bed rococo is actually a combination of two words the french word rakai which means shell work like those ornate effects with shells you get on grottos and fountains and at the end coco comes from barrocco again as so often happens with the names of art movements it was originally an insult the new style was so over the top said the critics so shapeless it was like crazy shell work the baroque gone mad rococo rococo implies an art that's shapeless and overloaded an art without sensible or logical boundaries and it's definitely true sometimes the rococo went too far in its search for freedom and looseness but other times the results were glorious breathtaking [Music] some of the world's most exciting interiors are rococo interiors oh how they fidget and shimmer and twinkle but if the rakoka was only a style of gorgeous interior that wouldn't be enough to be genuinely significant the fidgety and playful spirit of the rococo needed to infiltrate all the other arts as well particularly painting so it made a beeline for this especially popular rococo destination where reality feels dreamy and dreams feel real the shimmering city venice [Music] you can come to venice for all sorts of excellent rococo reasons to read a bit of kazanova for instance he was venetian of course to listen to vivaldi who was born in this square and baptized in that church [Music] but since this is a film about travel the first thing we need to do is to tackle the definitive travel artist the incomparable canaletto we're often guilty of underestimating caneletto he's famous yes but in top art historical circles the suspicion lingers that he was just a painter of postcards but he wasn't he really wasn't caneletto was a brilliant tinkerer with reality an artistic master chef who turned the raw ingredients of venice into irresistible new recipes now of course venice is really beautiful but it's not as beautiful as this nowhere is and of course the venetians can be very charming and lively but they're never as charming and lively as caneletto's venetians all this needed to be concocted [Music] it was actually born there where that hotel is in 1697. his father bernardo canal was a painter of stage scenery very well known worked in carnival shows and theaters so to differentiate himself from his dad the son began calling himself canaletto little canal or canal junior [Music] there are only two portraits of him this is one of them and little canals first pictures of venice as theatrical as anything his dad ever designed this is the island of san michele the cemetery island of venice and just look at all the thunder and drama which the young caneletto called down from its skies these first canelettos are so unexpectedly [Music] gothic here's the rio mendicanty today it's a pleasant place to hang out but you wouldn't want to hang out in canaletto's rio mende cantee it's too tense and grubby and attracts the wrong sort of people don't worry it was only water i was just trying to evoke caneletto's first moves [Music] then lo and behold a transformation suddenly in about 1728 1730 canaletto's art grows sunny lucid it's as if his output has come out from behind a cloud revealing a new venice brighter grander [Music] sunnier what happened is that he found himself a new market the english market and he adapted his art to suit it caneletto's sunny new venice was aimed chiefly at those privileged english travelers who'd embarked upon that awful circuit called the grand tour the grand tour was a kind of gap year for the rich and landed an educational holiday for those rococo travelers who could afford it and in florence naples they explored the ruins and the art galleries but in venice they explored the gambling dens the brothels the rococo's netherworld [Music] in rococo times venice was a very naughty place if you've read any casanova at all you'll know that in real life the grand tourists came here for the gambling the dressing up the sex but in art they wanted another kind of illusion a venice full of sunlight and lucidity so beautiful it could never have existed and that's what caneletto began painting for them an imaginary venice with the stains removed [Music] so how did he get that real look that sense of the truth such a marvelous feature of his art well use one of these the camera obscura dark chamber in latin i've ever wondered where the word camera comes from it comes from this [Music] lots of artists in history have used the camera obscura in their work but none as busily as caneletto it's basically a pinhole camera which throws an exact image onto this screen and you can then trace around it for a precise record of the scene [Music] this is the old naval dockyard in venice the arsenale it's hardly changed since canaletto painted it with those big lions there and the dramatic towers [Music] ah i'm not very good at this but caneletto was because of the shape of the camera obscura you only do like half the scene at once so after you've done this half here caneletto would move the camera obscure over and do the other half and then put the two parts together for the whole scene [Music] with such marvelous results [Music] back in the studio he'd improve the proportions put in some perfect weather and add some of those fabulous little caneletto people who scamper so charmingly about his art [Music] first he records reality then he tinkers with it starting with the truth he ends up with a fantasy and that's the rococo for you a rhino yes a rhino why because it's a very rococo site in rococo times this particular rhino rhinoceros unicornis the great indian rhino went from being an animal that hardly any european had ever seen to one that hardly any european had not seen [Music] they called it rhinomania suddenly rococo art was overrun by rhinos also it seemed in fact it was the same rhino painted lots of times her name was clara and she arrived in europe from india in 1741 and spent the rest of her life on a kind of grand tour of all the big european capitals london warsaw paris berlin and everywhere clara went the artists of the rococo flocked to see her this fascinating armored beastie appears in more art than any rococo king or hero [Music] clara's story was pure disney when she was just a few months old her mother was killed by indian hunters but the poor little rhino was saved by a dutch chap from the east india company who brought her up in his own house until she was too big to fit into it [Music] the dutch chap sold her to a passing sea captain who brought her back to europe and that's when clara set off on her grand tour in venice she was painted by pietro longi that cheeky observer of venetian society who admired the way she pooped and the striking contrast she offered to the masked ladies of the carnival in france she stayed in versailles with louis xv and was painted life-size by jean baptiste oodry [Music] and she's said to have inspired the latest french hairstyles [Music] but the clara i like best is the one preserved by the germans who put a large turk on her back and pretended she was domesticated and deep inside she wasn't [Music] the rococo is always presented as this great age of enlightenment when science triumphed and linnaeus classified the natural world and all that but if you look at the art of the period that all these strange animals that keep popping up in it you'll notice a definite taste for the inelegant and the primitive the clumsy and the oversized [Music] the rococo could have chosen any bird it fancied to put above its fireplace it could have chosen the peacock or the resplendent quetzal but no it chose the ostrich all over the rococo age these unexpected animals keep popping up i mean why put an ostrich above the most important mantle piece in the grandest room in your palace it's as if the rococo famous for its elegance and its sophistication was looking for the opposite in the animals it favored in england the great horse painter george stubbs did a fabulous sideline in wonky beasts here's his zebra a white pony with black stripes painted on and no that's not a giant hair brush it's a yak and i love stubbs magnificent cheetah in the manchester city art gallery but basically it's just an extra large tabby isn't it [Music] remember this was still the pre-darwinian world david attenborough hadn't even been born yet all this was genuinely strange genuinely new and exciting [Music] this isn't science it's not biology or zoology this is the opening of a fabulous goodie box filled with exotic sights and wondrous spectacles for the best part of three millennia european art had relied on the same limited catalogue of images now suddenly a whole new consignment of them had arrived at the port and to record it to do its justice the rococo needed to invent a new art form the resplendent art form that is fancy porcelain to be honest i'm not usually an admirer of fancy porcelain it's too frilly for my tastes i'm a mug man by instinct but what changed my mind what really opened my eyes to the power of porcelain was what they produced up there in the albrecksburg castle that fabulous turk sitting on a rhino with the brooding portrayal of clara that was made in here so was this and this when you say the word myson you say so much it all goes back to one man augustus the strong ruler of saxony king of poland and a man obsessed with china they called him augustus the strong for two reasons one because he was a brute of a man who could bend a horseshoe with his bare hands and two because augustus was a legendary seducer of women [Music] estimates vary about how many illegitimate children augustus fathered but it was somewhere around the 350 or 360 mark amazingly though this huge appetite for women wasn't augustus's most debilitating weakness somehow he found time for another terrible affliction because augustus was also addicted to chinese porcelain the french called his illness maladi de porcelain but that makes it sound gentler than it was when it came to porcelain augustus was deranged [Music] the addiction was so severe that augustus once swapped an entire regiment of saxon dragoons for 48 chinese vases and to house this enormous collection he'd amassed he built himself a fake oriental palace and filled it with 20 000 rare and expensive examples of chinese porcelain [Music] china wept the court mathematician lamenting the state of the national finances has become the bleeding bowl of saxony [Music] europeans have been lusting after chinese porcelain for centuries not just because it was so delicate and refined but also because porcelain was thought to have magic properties people believed it could resist fire and repel poison that made it particularly attractive of course to a king as unpopular as augustus the strong who was frittering away the national fortune on chinese pots the obvious solution was to stop importing expensive porcelain from china and to start making it here in mycen but that was easier said than done the chinese had been making porcelain since the sixth century but the secret of how it was done was zealously guarded various european despots desperate not to be poisoned by their subjects but had a go at reproducing it and failed but none of them was as fanatical as augustus the strong to help him realize his dream and start making his own porcelain augustus imprisoned yes imprisoned a young alchemist called johann friedrich [Music] he's the heroic one the one with his shirt off [Music] amazingly bertker actually did it he worked out that the secret of porcelain was to bake the clay at exciting new temperatures and by 1710 here at the albreczburg castle in mysome porcelain was being manufactured in europe for the first time the real alchemy begins when you start painting this hard white porcelain bake it put colour on it that's when it bursts into life with this exciting rococo vividness [Music] colors have never been as explosive as this before in art sculpture had never been this nimble this wasn't just the production of porcelain in europe was the invention of a new art form with new rules and new possibilities [Music] and it was so portable and compact with porcelain the rococo imagination became internationally unstoppable intrepid nomadic [Music] it began traveling wildly across the continents crazily imagining all the different worlds out there different animals different people different excitements india china japan all these far away locations were jumbled together to form one rich and gorgeous imaginary kingdom a porcelain orient filled with rococo goodies [Music] this taste for a mythical orient a fantastical new world that existed only in the rococo imagination wasn't confined to porcelain it seeped out into all the other arts as well with spectacular results [Music] when augustus the strong built his japanese palace on the banks of the elba to house his porcelain collection he was trying to imitate the powerful oriental emperors he'd heard about in the garbled stories about the east circling through the courts of europe none of these people had actually been to the east or had actually visited china it was all hearsay and rumor augustus had heard somewhere that oriental potentates built special palaces for their porcelain so that's what he did he'd heard that the emperor of china drank from a porcelain cup to guard against poison so he did the same now why did the germans become the most fanatical china lovers in europe i don't know but they did and here at song frederick the great of prussia built himself this splendid and unlikely approximation of a chinese pavilion [Music] of course nothing in china actually looked anything like this you'd never get a chinese building with a gold statue on top of a man holding an umbrella [Music] or with life-sized gold figures of musicians playing invented instruments or with a roof supported by middle eastern palm trees no one in china had ever built a building like this this was a european invention that's the thing about shinwasuri as they called this oriental illness it wasn't about china at all but about europe what we're actually watching here is the freeing of the european imagination an unleashing of sensuous european desires and i think this freeing of the european id these dreams of paradise thinly disguised as images of the east constitute a glorious breakout by the european spirit the joyous dash for freedom and excitement which should be recognized as one of the rococo's greatest achievements the wurzburg residence palace of the prince bishops of ferzberg wurzburg is quite a small town and this massive palace feels as if it's a couple of sizes too big for it it was designed by that man again altazar neumann giant of the rococo neumann became the court architect in wurzburg in 1720 and this was his first official commission before that he'd been in the army designing cannons so he came late to architecture and promptly designed this the prince bishops of warzberg had plenty of money plenty of power and plenty of artistic ambition this vault when you enter is a very strange space it feels too low for its width like an underground garage or something but it's actually a brilliant piece of engineering [Music] with this impossibly shallow vault neumann created enough space for a horse and carriage to turn around here without hitting anything without hitting any columns that's very clever and because he squeezed all this space down here made it so low he created more space on top for that the grand staircase at wurzburg walking up here mounting this staircase is a fantastic piece of rococo drama as you ascend you gradually become aware of something momentous happening above you and this extraordinary spectacle begins to open up this film is about travel and we've watched the impact of different kinds of travel on the rococo the grand tour with caneletto the great bavarian pilgrimages travel in the mind to all those exotic places but there's another kind of travel that was crucial and that's the journeys made by artists from one place to another from country to country spreading their influence like migrating birds spreading their seeds this fresco here this monumental achievement of the german rococo was painted by an italian a venetian the greatest fresco painter of the 18th century the incomparable tiapolo it's the largest continuous ceiling fresco ever painted a truly remarkable achievement by an italian in germany when tieple arrived here in 1750 lured out of italy by huge amounts of wurzburg money he got over 60 times what a master mason would earn in a year all this was bear plaster it took him about a year to do this that's all [Music] we're looking up at the sky it's dawn and apollo the god of the sun is about to set off in his chariot across the heavens [Music] so the sun's rising and it's rising above the whole world the four continents that were known at the time they've been painted around the edges and as you come up the stairs the first continent you see is america that's her there embodied by a topless indian riding a crocodile and unlike this rococo superman with another casual croc thrown over his shoulder on the left as you come up the stairs africa there she is riding a camel oh and look there's another ostrich with a monkey pulling its tail the longest wall is up there asia and she is riding an elephant with that ridiculous trunk like the hose of a vacuum cleaner remember the world was still being mapped in the rococo age there was still a sense of discovery out there and you sense it in tiapolo he pretends he knows all these exotic places and animals but he doesn't [Music] so there's europe up there the most developed of the continents and she's surrounded by musicians listening to a concert and all the other arts are in attendance as well look there's painting with the palette she has just finished that portrait floating up to heaven of the man who commissioned the great tiapolo prince bishop carl philip von griffin clown this europe scene is particularly interesting because it includes portraits of all the artists who worked on this great staircase so sprawled beside the cannon up there is balthazar neumann the architect dieppolo himself is over here in the corner looking rather strained and then next to him his son dominico tiapolo his brilliant apprentice [Music] that figure standing on the edge of the parapet the haughty one in the white cloak that's antonio bossie another traveling italian and a stucco genius perhaps the greatest there's ever been and he did all this three great creatives one great opportunity equals a gigantic rococo achievement all this traveling about by rococo artists led to some unexpected confrontations very unexpected i mean who could ever have imagined that the great caneletto would come to london and paint this view and then turn around and paint this one caneletto arrived in london in 1746 and he lived here for nine years so what the hell was he doing here well back in venice the market for his pictures had dried up the english just weren't traveling as much as they used to so the mountain decided to come to muhammad he was also keen to invest some money in stocks and shares he was a venetian after all so money was important to him and london then as now was europe's financial hub right from the start he was up to his old rococo tricks again in canaletto's london the thames is always wider and grander than nature intended [Music] and look how the skies are clearer and sunnier than london's smog-filled skies ever and how all those playful boats bobbing across the river seem to have inherited some of the happy insouciance of the gondola when he first got here westminster bridge the first new bridge across the thames since the middle ages was still being built and in typical canaletto fashion he couldn't resist painting it the city in flux had been one of his favorite subjects from the start new bridge new view and a playful new bucket swinging across the vista adding a cheeky note of incompletion there are lots of things i like about caneletto but his sense of fun is right up there caneletto's critics like to have a go with his english pictures he was basically painting venison thames they complain and it's true he was but that's because he was a rococo artist and rococo artists paint with their spirits not just their brushes [Music] at first he concentrated on these magnificent river views the thames was his grand canal and london was modified into somewhere he knew but then the curiosity kicked in he began prowling the back streets painting gripping vistas of a city in flux from about here in whitehall he painted the view from the first floor window of richmond house which isn't there anymore but which stood where i am now ricky scruffy low slung this is london behind the scenes an urban sprawl looking for a form i recognize the steeple of saint martin's in the fields in the background and that's about it london was changing furiously and the rococo gods had fixed it for the great canaletto to come to england and to paint what may be his finest picture [Music] this is where he lived in soho at the center of the italian community caneletto was up on the first floor this is the other portrait of him painted in london when he was about 50 and look how boyish he looks how charming and up for it [Music] when he finished with london he began scouring the rest of england for views here's eaton college looking extra tall in the afternoon sun [Music] and in this moody view of the old bridge at walton he lets some genuine british weather into his art at last but his most fruitful wonderings across england brought him here to warwick castle when caneletto got to warwick the castle was in the middle of an ambitious rebuild the owner francis greville earl of warwick had decided to make his castle look more gothic and then to place this gothic castle in a rococo garden designed by the celebrated capability brown capability brown liked to make his gardens look natural as if nature had created them rather than him [Music] and in canaletto's first view of warwick you can actually see a new hill being put a in years later when the alterations were more or less finished the earl of warwick invited caneletto back and this time he painted this splendid view before capability brown's new trees got in the way [Music] and then he painted this view which is even better these gorgeous views of warwick castle in the sunshine feel so vivid and real but of course they aren't the only place you get skies like that in england is in your dreams and that's what's so exciting about the rococo's passion for travel so much of the best voyaging was done in the mind [Music] back in bavaria meanwhile a humble pilgrim is back on the plot i'm afraid i've been a very naughty boy because i've saved the best till last there's so many lovely things to see in rococo bavaria but most people will tell you the loveliest of them all is that church on the horizon the vise kierke or meadow church plopped down here in the middle of nowhere [Music] it's the inside of the visakeeker that makes it so special but when you look at the outside as well with its gentle simplicity and that gorgeous apricot color like a tasty apricot sorbet [Music] imagine being an exhausted pilgrim who's tramped all the way through bavaria and then on the horizon deliberately positioned against the hills so you can't miss it the lovely pilgrimage church of peace beckoning irresistibly [Music] this is here because one day a girl in the village saw this wonky statue of jesus crying and that was that within a few months this had become a must-go pilgrimage destination two local brothers the zimmermanns were commissioned to build this rococo masterpiece [Music] just look at it how light it feels and insubstantial if you blow at it it might all blow away [Music] it's all done with stucco painted plaster the rococo's secret ingredient so light and adaptable [Music] see those columns stucco see those saints stucco see that roof stucco with stucco you can defy gravity what shape do you think that vault is it looks like a huge expanse of dome doesn't it but if you go outside again out here into the meadow and if we look up at that roof from outside we'll see that it's actually an ordinary sloping roof straight sided made of wood so all that bulging space in there all that billowing heaven inside let's go back in and have another look has actually been painted on a simple pointy roof it's that rococo ingenuity again i'll show you how they did it on this diagram so that's the roof there and suspended from it the vault hanging down by a simple rope so it weighs nothing it's a brilliant rococo illusion and up on the ceiling painted by johann baptiste zimmerman the illusions continue with an enormous message of hope the resurrected jesus is sitting on a rainbow that most hopeful of symbols and he's pointing at the cross so we know he's already saved us with his sacrifice [Music] but look over here the throne of judgment it's empty jesus hasn't sat down on it yet so there's still time for us to mend our ways but not much time [Music] because over here the gates of eternity are still closed heaven hasn't actually opened for business yet old father times completed his journey but who goes in and who doesn't is still up for grabs so imagine you're a rococo pilgrim and you've traveled all this way you come in here into this gorgeous space you must have thought you'd already arrived in heaven but then you look up and instead of salvation there's this enormous choice what's it to be sinner salvation or damnation do you repent or don't you that's the rococo for you it's full of honey traps bless me father for i have sinned it's 35 years since my last confession i've done all sorts of terrible things father where should i start in the next film we'll be looking at that archetypal rococo subject pleasure and asking why the rococo produced some of the most sensuous art ever made that's the rococo and pleasure the next film in the story of the rococo

Channel: Perspective

Views: 365,169

Rating: 4.9138393 out of 5

Keywords: Arts, The Arts, Theatre, Music, Full EPisode, Full documentary, documentary, performing arts, rococo art, rococo fashion, art history, waldemar januszczak, waldemar januszczak documentary, waldemar, waldemar art history, art history documentary perspective, canaletto paintings, canaletto documentary, bavarian architecture, art culture, history documentary, baroque (art period/movement), art documentary, baroque documentary, documentary movies - topic

Id: X1UA_YvKqnc

Length: 59min 55sec (3595 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 15 2020

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This YouTube channel has many of Waldemar’s films. Highly recommended.