Rococo: The "Crude" Art Of Pleasure (Waldemar Januszczak Documentary) | Perspective

[Music] ah versailles mighty palace of the french kings and a crucial rococo hotspot i wanted to come to versailles to read you this it's an important rococo document and it sums up what this film is about now if you're an american you might be thinking that's not a rococo document that's the declaration of independence and of course you're right this is the document with which america declared its independence from britain on the 4th of july 1776 but this is a rococo document not just because of its date but because of what's in it what thomas jefferson wrote in here embodies what this film is about particularly the famous second sentence the one about all those unalienable rights that we all hold according to the declaration of independence all of us have an unalienable right to life liberty and the pursuit of happiness [Music] now life and liberty of course they're obvious but the pursuit of happiness when did that become an unalienable human when will we put on earth to be happy i'll tell you when in the rococo era that's when this isn't just the declaration of independence this is a rococo manifesto [Music] [Applause] [Music] ah the rococo pursued happiness in various ways and various places as you'll see in this film but of course the first thing you need to get right when you pursue happiness is love the pursuit of love fueled the rococo age like petrol fueling a fire love ought to be so uncomplicated or didn't it they meets b they like each other and live happily ever after but of course it hardly ever works out that way the pleasures of love shouldn't be complicated but they are love shouldn't be a battleground but it is and to its credit the rococo age knew this the rococo recognized love for what it really was a powerful intoxicant that left you weak and helpless like an illness no one knew this better than the most wistful of the rococo's many observers of love the genius of painted flirtation antoine water [Music] watto or vato as they call him in paris was from northern france valencian on the belgian border so his origins were actually flemish we know that his father was a humble ruth tyler and the watto arrived in paris in about 1702 and that's about all we know voto is usually credited with inventing a new genre of painting called the fete gallant there's no exact english translation of fete gallant it's a kind of garden fate devoted to love a festival of outdoor flirtation [Music] in a fit gallant dreamy couples stroll across a dreamy landscape of parks and trees music's playing hearts are fluttering secrets are being swapped [Music] in the background there's often a playful statue of some greek or roman god ready to come to life and booming in the distance unheard by anyone in the picture but ringing out clear as a bell to us is a loud warning beware love is on the loose this is voto's masterpiece it's one of the key images of the rococo [Music] it used to be called the embarkation for sithara but these days there are arguments about what it actually shows sithara was the mediterranean island on which venus the goddess of love was supposed to have been born the legend goes the kronos the titan castrated his father uranus ruler of the universe and threw his testicles into the sea and the sperm from uranus's testes gave birth to aphrodite or venus as the romans called her who rose up out of the waters and floated to sythera that famous painting by botticelli the birth of venus shows exactly this moment venus the goddess of love floating to sithera in a sea shell in the voto painting venus is over here and typically he's turned her into this rather ambiguous statue is she real or isn't she stone or flesh we know it's venus because of all these cupids buzzing around her cupid was venus's son the god of desire and if he fired one of his arrows at you well that was it you had to fall in love so that's why all these pilgrims are here most pilgrims go in search of god but not this lot votto's pilgrims are searching for love the question is are they coming or going it used to be thought that these pilgrims of love were setting off for sithara that's why the painting was called the embarkation but that doesn't really make sense does it why would they be setting off for the island of love when they're already in love i mean look at these two here so the latest thinking is that this is a departure not an arrival venus has presided over an intoxicating visit to her island by a boatload of pilgrims and now the visit's over the boat is waiting it's time to go home so despite all the venuses and the cherubs this is actually a rather gloomy picture according to legend sithura was the only place on earth where perfect love could be found so what voto is actually showing us is the end of perfect happiness that's why she's looking back so wistfully that where she's just been she knows she'll never have all this again for me there's almost a religious dimension to voto's gloom all these sons and daughters of adam and eve fated never to find the perfect happiness they're looking for and that's what's so interesting about rococo art it goes on and on about happiness and pleasure but deep inside it seems instinctively to know that in the twinkling of an eye it could all be over in the garden of love the pursuit of happiness took place outdoors against the beautiful backdrop of nature what happened therefore to the rococo when it went indoors to achieve indoor happiness the rococo had to invent a new kind of architecture a new way of living in comfortable new spaces created specifically for the pursuit of pleasure in places like this san souci in potsdam prussia the pleasure palace of frederick ii or as he's most usually called frederick the great now i'm polish so i'm deeply prejudiced against frederick the great he's the prussian king who organized the partitioning of poland tore up my country and shared it out with the russians in war and politics frederick was ruthless but in private he was more complicated more interesting it was actually frederick who designed this palace the palace of san soo sea [Music] this is the original design he sketched out for it and as you can see it's all on one level a palace with the ease of access of a bungalow no stairs to climb up direct access to the gardens an architecture of ease and pleasure frederick named his palace song french name which means without worry [Music] at the foot of the great bungalow there's a handy vineyard all this pleasure at his doorstep frederick designed the decoration as well those figures up there the big ones those are bakanti's followers of bacchus the god of wine and look he's put the name of the palace sans susie right in the middle between two of them but it's written rather strangely [Music] it actually says song full stop so why the comma why the full stop [Music] it's very puzzling but also very typical because frederick loved playing word games [Music] it was his rococo way of having fun written up on the front of his palace was a message to the world that no one could understand forget bletchley park forget the enigma machine this is a german code that's really tough to crack hundreds of great brains have had a go at it but i think the secret is not to aim too high okay sauce is french for without that bit's easy but the french word for coma virgo well that comes from the latin virgo which means little rod or little stick and of course a little stick a little rod can have a sexual connotation so sass virgo has a naughty twist to it i told you not to aim too high now so see that means worry so that's straightforward again but the french word for full stop that is also used in literary french posh french as a way of suggesting a negative so instead of saying something isn't something you say in posh literary french something is not something else there's one other bit of information that's important frederick is thought to have been gay he had no children his marriage was sexless and a rumor during the rounds claimed that when he was young he contracted a sexual disease from a male lover and after that his little rod never worked again [Music] we do know that women weren't allowed into san souci no women was a strict house rule so what that code up there the way sansouci is written what it actually seems to be saying is sas worry stops only the rococo could have come up with that inside san souci the rococo revolution gently continues to lead the new rococo way of life you needed new rococo spaces [Music] this is the music room where all you did was play music and listen to it frederick was actually a very decent composer he played the flute and wrote numerous concertos you're actually listening to one now the dining room another rococo speciality of course they've been big drafty banqueting halls before but this idea of a room created specially for the pleasures of eating with all the different courses served on gorgeous pieces of crockery that was a rococo idea the bedroom when it comes to the pursuit of pleasure the bedroom was of course especially important before the rococo age the bedroom was a room for sleeping in but now well now it became a room full of pleasurable possibilities what we're actually watching here is the invention of modern living frilly bedrooms elegant dining rooms single level living in a bungalow the rococo was so prescient it even invented the home study [Music] study was now seen as one of life's great pleasures people started having libraries at home as voltaire put it probably in this very room because he stayed here once study delivers us from the burden of our [Music] leisure [Music] ah do you know what the greek word for beautiful is it's o morphe and the only reason i know that is because of casanova here during one of his interminable searches for love casanova encountered a young irish girl called louise o'murphy oh murphy was the daughter of an irish soldier who'd somehow ended up in france casanova saw her naked one day and was so struck by her teenage beauty he had her picture painted and on this picture he says he added the inscription oh morphe beautiful in greek a pun on her name o murphy most of what casanova wrote the omorphy story is obviously nonsense he just made it up but louisa murphy isn't nonsense she definitely existed the proof is this infamous painting of her by francoise boucher court painter to louis xv the picture nicknamed the blonde odalisk hangs at the alta pinakatec in munich and shows louisa murphy sticking out her bottom brazenly the real louiso murphy was louis the 15th teenage mistress she bought him children gave him her best years and then he dumped her so nothing remarkable there a typical story of the french court but boucher's portrait is remarkable for its sheer licentiousness [Music] art has given us plenty of nudes before but none of them was quite as shameless and direct as this boucher is often viewed as the rococo's most typical painter particularly by those who don't like the rococo as louis the 15th official artist he was the go-to painter in the rococo's naughtiest moments do i like his work no do we have to deal with it yes [Music] because boucher's frilly nudes and pink bottomed goddesses mark the arrival in art of a new type of sensuality [Music] crude pink and artificial in bouchet's art nothing looks real it's like rococo manga a cartoonish world in which the pursuit of pleasure has had all its complications removed no doubt no guilt no hesitation just desire raw and color coded a plastic pink [Music] boucher painted another notorious female portrait in the same pose as louise o'murphy it hangs in the louvre now and this one is nicknamed the brunette odalisk this time the woman in the picture is boucher's own wife poor madame boucher has spread-eagled herself for him and pulled up her night dress so distressed was the french encyclopedist diderot by this notorious image that he accused boucher of prostituting his own wife in bouchet fumed diderot degradation of taste color composition character expression and drawing have all kept pace with moral depravity one of the main subplots of this series apart from showing you all the different sides of the rococo is to prove to you that the rococo age invented the modern world if i show you a vote that doesn't really do it does it votto's too subtle and elusive too whispery and gentle but if i show you a buchet well that's us isn't it pleasure without consequences nudity without modesty desire without boundaries get yourself down to your local news agent have a look at the top shelf and i think you'll find those are our preferences too but just because boucher painted so many subservient women doesn't mean that all the women of the rococo were subservient they weren't [Music] right we're going to have a general knowledge quiz on this table i have three things and i want you to tell me what it is that connects them so the first thing is the champagne glass in that baby sham shape what they call a coup de champagne so that's object number one next elvis in his pomp note the hairstyle that's the clue and finally this bottle of nail polish pink nail polish a particular kind of pink so pink nail polish elvis and a champagne glass what connects them easy peasy right i bet all you stephen fries out there got it straight away what connects all these objects is that momentous rococo presence the infamous the all-powerful madame de pompadour louis the 15th favorite mistress [Music] the first and greatest of the gaunt horizontal just in case you didn't get it elvis's hairstyle here all piled up in a teddy boy cliff that's called a pompadour it's how madame de pompadour wore her hair brushed up from the front an uplifting style [Music] and this color here that's very specifically pompadour pink pink was her favorite color it was particularly popular in the serve porcelain factory on which she lavished so much of her attention and the nation's money madame de pompadour's pink became one of the rococo's definitive colors this according to legend this type of champagne glass the flat type the coop de champagne this is supposed to have been inspired say the french by the shape of madame de pompadour's breasts which were cupped gently like this madame de pompadour is supposed to have met the french king louis xv at a fancy dress ball in february 1745 in the famous hall of mirrors in versailles madame de pompadour came as a sexy shepherdess while the king bizarrely was dressed as a tree so he didn't even have to lure her into the bushes to have his wicked way with her he was the bushes [Music] by the end of the evening she climbed into his branches and that night the courtship saw her carriage parked outside the royal apartments where it stayed for the next 20 years [Music] what madame de pompadour seemed to realize straight away as she set about becoming the most powerful woman in france and then the most powerful woman in the world was that she could use art to shape her image and maintain her power in reality she was just the daughter of a failed parisian financier but in art she could become something else something new in art madame de pompadour could become a captivating rococo presence [Music] her favorite portraitist boucher again was particularly skilled at portraying her he shows her playing a piano or reading a book [Music] beauty yes but also brains notice how in most of bushes pictures of her she shows you this side a best side but in this one unusually she's looking straight at us and what's really interesting about the way bushey portrayed her is how unregal she looks how informal by this time 1750 her power was absolute pompadour sent more people to the bastille than any french king [Music] she started wars she changed world history but in bouche's art she's such a light and delicate and kittenish presence one of the chief functions of these pictures was to keep the king interested he was paying for them all after all so that kaketish tone they have that shy thing looking out through the big eyes that's not aimed at you or me that's aimed at louis xv the most powerful woman in europe is saying i'm only a delicate little flower so come and protect me you big hunk of a king [Music] elsewhere in the rococo the female cast of this exciting age was achieving a different kind of power religious power this is the church of the carmini in venice and inside are a couple of beautiful altarpieces one by chima de cornigliano and the other by lorenzo lotto but we're not going to see them because they were painted in the renaissance and this is a film about the rococo [Music] so instead we're going next door to the squala grande [Music] these squalas were charitable organizations set up to help the poor so if you are homeless in rococo times you came in here and it puts you up not bad for a hostel is it [Music] this particular squala grande was set up by an organization of charitable women called the lay carmelites they weren't actually nuns they were friends of nuns associated with a carmelite order and their main task here is to make these scapulas the scapula is a catholic talisman something you wear around your neck to ward off evil and keep you on the straight and narrow it's just two bits of cloth connected to the sides and you wear it around your neck like that under your shirt i must have one as a kid but i'm afraid i strayed from the straight and narrow and this is a recent purchase if you wear a scapula the story goes and leader pious life you're sure to go to heaven the virgin mary herself has guaranteed it this entire building the whole squalor was funded on the proceeds of selling these things they were very popular as you can imagine free ticket to heaven anyway the reason i brought you in here is because the rococo masterpiece we're here to see is all about scapulas it's by tiapolo the greatest ceiling painter of the rococo we saw him in film one of this series the one about travel working for the rich and famous in bavaria here in his hometown of venice in the squala grande de carmini he's working for god and the scapula what the ceiling actually shows us is the moment the virgin mary handed the first scapular to a saint called saint simon stock [Music] he's the old boy with the beard on the left who's being handed the scapula by a handsome angel [Music] tiapolo's most haughty madonna a grand dam of the skies looks down her nose at us in that venetian way while stock the grateful carmelite saint reaches out pathetically for her gift like a down and out in a doorway asking for a couple of bob gov do you know where we're actually meant to be where all this is set it's actually cambridge in england because that's where the virgin mary appeared to the english saint saint simon stock on july the 16th 12 51 he'd been asking for a favor from her and she gave him the scapula with the words whosoever dies wearing this scapula shall not suffer eternal fire [Music] if you wear one of these you're sure to be saved so the carmelites did really well out of the scapula lots of people wanted one and in 1749 to mark this great success tiapolo was commissioned to paint this ceiling so why are we here with our scapulars and our unlikely saints tales because this is an excellent place to witness the pleasure principle at work in the religious art of the rococo tiapolo has set his action in the cool and calm light of dawn the sky is blue the sun tints the clouds a gentle pink the lighting of tiepolo's skies is delightful this is the ceiling of the nearby church of the jesuit it was cleaned just recently and look how cool and refreshing the skies are tiapolo took religious art out of the thunder the storms and explosions of the baroque and relocated it in the cool calm delicious light of a venetian dawn it's one of his greatest achievements they've lit a lot of fires in here in the past 300 years so it's all yellower than it should be but you can still feel this new airiness of tiepolo's religious vision in the baroque age religious art tried to or you into submission in the rococo it enchants you entices you seduces you tiapolo's art is a religious honey trap with perfect weather conditions beautiful religious babes and if you wear one of these a shortcut to heaven who could resist all of that where's the ladder i want to go up there [Music] venice france germany [Music] you expect the rococo to have fetched up in those places don't you as we saw in film one it was an artistic impulse hellbent on travel so sooner or later it had to arrive in britain as well the british aren't naturally rococo types of course but this wasn't some will of the wisp art movement that flutters briefly and it's gone the rococo looks fragile and delicate but it turned out to be unstoppable it was a sandstorm of pleasure that blew in everywhere even the door and cold-blooded britons couldn't keep it out forever so we got here eventually and look what it gave us gainsborough the most dashing quick-fingered loose-wristed painter britain has ever produced gainsborough could paint anything he was that good he did landscapes that are so breathy and healthy and british he painted men of power and gave them an air of interesting complexity and he painted himself too as a modest chap with strong eyes [Music] so he did all that but there are two things he did particularly well the first is paint women which he did with breathtaking braviaura i think this one's my favorite countess howe of kenwood house [Music] it's her pink dress that intoxicates me and the fact that she looks so much like helen mirren but wait this could be my favorite too mrs robinson at the wallis collection look how much character he finds in that exceptional rococo face oh here's to you mrs robinson this is sophia charlotte digby lady sheffield she just got married hence the big rococo get up and look how she casually dangles her arm making sure we can all see her wedding ring [Music] sophia charlotte digby knows we're looking at her but she pretends she doesn't it's brilliant pictorial psychology from a painter who obviously knew a thing or two about women and their rococo desire to express themselves through their clothes [Music] and look at her feet she's moving you can almost hear all those extravagant silks rustling as she glides towards us a bouquet on the move this movement the strolling the gliding was new for three thousand years portraits had basically stayed still the artist plonked the sitter in front of you and you examined them that was the deal gaines brother was different gainsborough got his sitters strolling towards us heading for our space ambling through the parks and even dancing to the pleasurable new beat of the rococo it's a bit like television presenters in the old days you plonked them in front of the subject and they stayed there but these days your modern presenter is often on the move and sometimes has to throw in some serious walking [Music] the second thing gainsborough was particularly good at was children my but gainsborough was good at children [Music] the rococo invented childhood as we know it before the rococo came along children were seen as many adults humankind in its imperfect early form [Music] in a world where half of all newborns died before they were five childhood was seen as something you survived the quicker you grew out of it the better [Music] it wasn't until the rococo years that childhood began to be recognized as something precious which needed to be protected and enjoyed a brief and beautiful moment of innocence and freedom [Music] as russo the influential french philosopher and champion of childhood put it to all those parents afraid their kids were now doing nothing is it nothing to be happy nothing to run and jump all day give nature time to work before taking over a business [Music] i think this is my favorite painting of children in the whole of art there are a couple of picassos that are in this sort of league but nothing else [Music] these are actually gainsborough's own daughters margaret on the left mary on the right she was five and she was six the two girls skipped through a wood chasing a butterfly margaret reaches out to grab it while mary the older one holds back i love that yellow dress she's wearing it's a triumph of flashing rococo brush strokes but just because it's dashingly done doesn't mean it's carefree yes the rococo chased after pleasure but it wasn't always blind to the consequences look where the butterflies landed a thorn bush uh-oh when margaret grabs it she'll prick her hand so what we've got here is a doting dad who happens to be an artist of genius warning his daughters of the dark reality that lies ahead when childhood finishes this begins tragically the symbolism of the butterfly and the thorn bush turned out to be horribly pertinent [Music] it's almost as if gainsborough had some kind of premonition his beloved daughters pop up often in his art and you can watch their lives unravelling in these exceptionally tender pictures this one here mary made a disastrous marriage to a german oboe player called johann christian fisher that's his music you can hear playing [Music] decent composer dreadful husband [Music] the marriage lasted a year by which time poor mary had begun to lose her mind margaret meanwhile remained a lifelong spinster and when her sister's life fell apart she moved in with her the two of them lived out their old age together how spooky that gainsborough managed somehow to intuit all this back at versailles the adults of the rococo were also having trouble growing up welcome to the world's largest dolls house this is the fake village built at versailles for marie antoinette the notorious queen of louis xvi it was built between 1783 and 1787 and every single inch of it is a fantasy the hammer de la ren the queen's hamlet as it's called was meant to look like a village in normandy with these dinky half-timbered cottages and the useful front gardens filled with picture book cabbages [Music] most of the fake village actually worked this dairy here was a functioning dairy and once the servants had washed down the cows for her marie antoinette would do the milking herself using porcelain buckets made specially for her by the serve factory [Music] in real life of course marie antoinette didn't have a rural bone in her body she was the daughter of the holy roman emperor an austrian arch duchess bred and brought up to rule the plebs but that was in real life in the queen's hamlet this extraordinary full-size rural theater set the austrian arch duchess could play at being a modest milkmaid tending her flock [Music] the queen would wonder about her village dressed as a simple country girl in a plain muslin dress and a straw hat she actually lived in this extra large cottage here the bijou two-story cottage in her virtual hammo marie antoinette could be someone else no longer the much-hated queen of france wasting the nation's money on fancy fripperies but a simple country lass leading a simple country life the usual way to understand all this crazy rural escapism is to see it as a display of decadence the grotesque rococo descent into falsehood and hedonism marie antoinette and her versailles milkmaids drifting further and further away from reality [Music] but it was also part of something bigger something more prescient a prediction if you like of how the world would go [Music] these days lots of people pour out of the city and into the countryside fantasizing about the rural way of life the hammer de la ren in versailles is a giant version of the country cottage somewhere to flee at weekends from the pressures of city living but instead of moving to the cotswolds marie antoinette could afford to make the cotswolds come to her this great rural grand design of hers wasn't just an escape it was also a vision of the future [Music] did you know that the word school comes from the ancient greek school which means leisure time or play it's like plato says here in his famous laws games and play are a crucial part of our education it's where we really learn about life but that was in ancient greece i'm not so sure the same thing applies to rococo france the relentless make-believe which characterizes the rococo's pursuit of happiness and pops up so often in its art doesn't seem particularly educational to me more like a way of being naughty without making it obvious i don't know if you've ever played hot cockles it's a christmas game it's very popular in the rococo the rules of hot cockles are basic to the point of being inane one person lays his head on the lap of another person while someone else spanks them from behind on the bottom the point of the game is to guess who spanked you and if you get it right you get to spank them next so it's a silly game but the reason the rococo liked it and why that quintessential rococo painter jean honore fragonar painted it was because hot cockles had a powerful erotic undertone men get to lay their heads in the laps of women and women get to lay their heads in the laps of men and then they spank each other i wonder why that caught on in rococo france fragonard was a pupil of bouchers who specialized in sly paintings of rococo people having fun but he wasn't all bad look at the way he uses that exciting new rococo color yellow ooh fragonard was the most exciting user of yellow art had so far seen not so good however is the clunky eroticism that distinguishes his art his most famous picture the swing is spectacularly naughty it's just not immediately obvious [Music] who doesn't love a swing swings provide such childish and innocent pleasure but not in the rococo in rococo times anyone looking at fragonard's swing would have known immediately what was really going on here the movement of the swing up and down was a notorious sexual illusion as for the lover on the ground well what can he be looking at it would be her underwear except of course that in rococo times there was no underwear [Music] another telling joke in the swing is that the chap on the ground the one looking up the girl's skirt is in the exact pose of michelangelo's adam on the sistine ceiling and we all know what happened to adam when he took a bite of eve's apple so all these games the rococo played which fragonard painted so slyly weren't really games at all they were pretences deceits secret ways of being naughty a world obsessed with having fun was losing its moral bearings and no one was certain anymore where real life ended and fantasy began [Applause] [Music] what's real and what isn't where do the games stop and real life begin the rococo era never could tell the difference this is a very rococo location perhaps the most rococo location in london madam to swords and that's madame tussaud herself wax artist extraordinaire that's her self-portrait as a young girl madame tusal was taught wax modelling by a doctor her mother worked for he took her under his arm and shared his forensic skills with her she got so good at it that in 1780 she was appointed art tutor to louis the 16th sister madame elizabeth and for the next 10 years she lived in versailles and watched its downfall [Music] when the french revolution broke out in 1789 tusor was also arrested but she talked away out of it and began making death masks of those who'd been sent to the guillotine the wax models she made of the decapitated heads were put on these poles and then paraded through the streets like flags she made louie the 16th death mask and this one here is mary antoinette this then was where the pursuit of happiness would eventually lead and how very ricoco of the rococo that even in death it couldn't tell the difference between reality and fantasy [Music] so far in this series i've been enjoying the pleasures of the rococo the good news but you can't drift as far away from reality as the rococo did without losing your bearings and in the next film we'll be looking at what happens in rococo art when reality creeps out and darkness creeps in

Channel: Perspective

Views: 895,271

Keywords: Arts, The Arts, Theatre, Music, Full EPisode, Full documentary, documentary, performing arts, waldemar januszczak, waldemar januszczak documentary, history documentary, rococo (art period/movement), baroque (art period/movement), art history, documentary movies - topic, zcz films, art documentary, waldemar januszczak baroque, waldemar januszczak rococo, waldemar januszczak perspective, Boucher, Watteau, Gainsborough, Tiepolo, art history documentary

Id: 5ZLblyYnrk0

Length: 59min 52sec (3592 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 21 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/monsterflake]

i just discovered the waldemar series on art in the last year, and i can't recommend him enough. he's a great presenter, and does a great job telling these stories.