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Neoclassicism
*** Shopping-Tip: Neoclassicism
:''For information about the economic theory, see
Neoclassical economics.''
:''For neoclassicism in architecture, see also
Neoclassical architecture.''
:''For neoclassicism in music, see also
Neoclassicism (music).''
'''Neoclassicism''' (sometimes rendered as '''Neo-Classicism''' or '''Neo-classicism''') is the name given to quite distinct
Cultural movement movements in the
visual arts,
literature,
theatre,
music, and
architecture. These movements were in effect at various times between the
18th century 18th and the
20th century 20th centuries. This article addresses what these "neoclassicisms" have in common.
What any "neo"-classicism depends on most fundamentally is a consensus about a body of work that has achieved ''
western canon canonic'' status (''illustration, below''). These are the "classics." Ideally— and neoclassicism is essentially an art of an ideal— an artist, well-schooled and comfortably familiar with the canon, does not repeat it in lifeless reproductions, but synthesizes the tradition anew in each work. This sets a high standard, clearly; but though a neoclassical artist who fails to achieve it may create works that are inane, vacuous or even mediocre, gaffes of taste and failures of craftsmanship are not commonly neoclassical failings. Novelty, improvisation, self-expression, and blinding inspiration are not neoclassical virtues; neoclassicism exhibits perfect control of an idiom. It does not recreate art forms from the ground up with each new project, as
modernism demanded. "Make it new" was the modernist credo of the poet
Ezra Pound.
Image:PanniniMusImagin.jpg Giovanni Paolo Pannini thumb|right|360px|Late Baroque classicizing: [[Giovanni Paolo Pannini|G. P. Pannini assembles the canon of Roman ruins and Roman sculpture into one vast imaginary gallery (1756).html" title="Meaning of G. P. Pannini.html" title="Meaning of thumb|right|360px|Late Baroque classicizing: [[Giovanni Paolo Pannini|G. P. Pannini">thumb|right|360px|Late Baroque classicizing: [[Giovanni Paolo Pannini|G. P. Pannini assembles the canon of Roman ruins and Roman sculpture into one vast imaginary gallery (1756)">G. P. Pannini.html" title="Meaning of thumb|right|360px|Late Baroque classicizing: [[Giovanni Paolo Pannini|G. P. Pannini">thumb|right|360px|Late Baroque classicizing: [[Giovanni Paolo Pannini|G. P. Pannini assembles the canon of Roman ruins and Roman sculpture into one vast imaginary gallery (1756)
Speaking and thinking in English, "neoclassicism" in each art implies a particular canon of "classic" models. We recognize them, even if we struggle against their power:
Virgil,
Raffaello Santi Raphael,
Nicolas Poussin,
Joseph Haydn Haydn. Other cultures have other canons of classics, however, and a recurring strain of neoclassicism appears to be a natural expression of a culture at a certain moment in its career, a culture that is highly self-aware, that is also confident of its own high mainstream tradition, but at the same time feels the need to ''regain'' something that has slipped away:
Apollonius of Rhodes is a neoclassic writer;
Ming Dynasty Ming ceramics pay homage to Sung
celadon porcelains; Italian 15th century humanists learn to write a "Roman" hand we call
Italic type italic (a.k.a.
Carolingian minuscule Carolingian); Neo-Babylonian culture is a neoclassical revival, and in
Persian Empire Persia the "classic" religion of
Zoroaster,
Zoroastrianism, is revived after centuries, to "re-Persianize" a culture that had fallen away from its own classic Achaemenean past. Within the direct Western tradition, the earliest movement motivated by a neoclassicial inspiration is a Roman style that was first distinguished by the German art historian
Friedrich Hauser (''Die Neuattische Reliefs'' Stuttgart 1889), who identified the style-category he called "Neo-Attic" among sculpture produced in later Hellenistic circles during the last century or so BCE and in Imperial Rome; the corpus that Hauser called "Neo-Attic" consists of bas reliefs molded on decorative vessels and plaques, employing a figural and drapery style that looked for its canon of "classic" models to late 5th and early 4th century Athens and Attica.
{{TOCleft}}
Neoclassicism in architecture and the visual arts
:''Main article:
Neoclassical architecture''.
Image:Mk01n101.jpg Theophil Freiherr von Hansen.html" title="Meaning of thumbnail thumbnail|right|The Academy, designed by [[Theophil Freiherr von Hansen and completed in 1885, in
Athens,
Greece..html" title="Meaning of right|The Academy, designed by [[Theophil Freiherr von Hansen">thumbnail|right|The Academy, designed by [[Theophil Freiherr von Hansen and completed in 1885, in
Athens,
Greece.">right|The Academy, designed by [[Theophil Freiherr von Hansen">thumbnail|right|The Academy, designed by [[Theophil Freiherr von Hansen and completed in 1885, in
Athens,
Greece.
In the
visual arts the European movement called "neoclassicism" began after ''ca'' 1765, as a reaction against both the surviving
Baroque and
Rococo styles, and as a desire to return to the perceived "purity" of the arts of
Ancient Rome Rome, the more vague perception ("ideal") of
Ancient Greece Ancient Greek arts (where almost no western artist had actually been) and, to a lesser extent, 16th century
Renaissance Classicism.
Contrasting with the
Baroque and the
Rococo, Neo-classical paintings are devoid of pastel colors and haziness; instead, they have sharp colors with
Chiaroscuro. In the case of Neo-classicism in France, a prime example is
Jacques Louis David whose paintings often use greek elements to extoll the
French Revolution's virtues (state before family).
Image:FuseliArtistMovedtoDespair.jpg Henry_Fuseli.html" title="Meaning of thumb thumb|right|[[Henry Fuseli, "The artist moved to despair at the grandeur of antique fragments", 1778–79.html" title="Meaning of right|[[Henry Fuseli">thumb|right|[[Henry Fuseli, "The artist moved to despair at the grandeur of antique fragments", 1778–79">right|[[Henry Fuseli">thumb|right|[[Henry Fuseli, "The artist moved to despair at the grandeur of antique fragments", 1778–79
Each "neo"- classicism selects some models among the range of possible classics that are available to it, and ignores others. The neoclassical writers and talkers, patrons and collectors, artists and sculptors of 1765 - 1830 paid homage to an ''idea'' of the generation of
Pheidias, but the sculpture examples they actually embraced were more likely to be Roman copies of Hellenistic sculptures. They ignored both Archaic Greek art and the works of Late Antiquity. The Rococo art of ancient
Palmyra came as a revelation, through engravings in Wood's ''The Ruins of Palmyra''. Even in all-but-unvisited Greece, a rough backwater of the Ottoman Empire, dangerous to explore, neoclassicists' appreciation of Greek architecture was mediated through drawings and engravings, which subtly smoothed and regularized, "corrected' and "restored" the monuments of Greece, not always consciously. As for painting, Greek painting was utterly lost: neoclassicist painters imaginatively revived it, partly through bas-relief friezes, mosaics, and pottery painting and partly through the examples of painting and decoration of the High Renaissance of
Raffaello Santi Raphael's generation, frescos in Nero's ''
Domus Aurea'',
Pompeii and
Herculaneum and through renewed admiration of
Nicholas Poussin. Much "neoclassical" painting is more classicisizing in subject matter than in anything else.
There is an anti-Rococo strain that can be detected in some European
architecture of the earlier 18th century, most vividly represented in the
Palladian architecture of Georgian
Britain and
Ireland, but also recognizable in a classicizing vein of architecture in
Berlin. It is a robust architecture of self-restraint, academically selective now of "the best" Roman models.
Image:Gau1878.jpg Gatchina.html" title="Meaning of thumb thumb|left|250px|A conservative Italian interior translated to Russia: Dressing-Room at the [[Gatchina palace by
Luigi Vanvitelli's pupil
Antonio Rinaldi, 1770s.html" title="Meaning of left|250px|A conservative Italian interior translated to Russia: Dressing-Room at the [[Gatchina">thumb|left|250px|A conservative Italian interior translated to Russia: Dressing-Room at the [[Gatchina palace by
Luigi Vanvitelli's pupil
Antonio Rinaldi, 1770s">left|250px|A conservative Italian interior translated to Russia: Dressing-Room at the [[Gatchina">thumb|left|250px|A conservative Italian interior translated to Russia: Dressing-Room at the [[Gatchina palace by
Luigi Vanvitelli's pupil
Antonio Rinaldi, 1770s
Neoclassicism first gained influence in
England and
France, through a generation of French art students trained in Rome and influenced by the writings of
Johann Joachim Winckelmann, and it was quickly adopted by progressive circles in
Sweden. At first, classicizing decor was grafted onto familiar European forms, as in the interiors for Catherine II's lover
Count Orlov, designed by an Italian architect with a team of Italian ''stuccadori'': only the isolated oval medallions like cameos and the
bas-relief overdoors hint of neoclassicism; the furnishings are fully Italian Rococo (''illustration, left'').
Image:PiranesiVasiCippi.jpg Giovanni_Battista Piranesi thumb|right|[[Giovanni Battista Piranesi|G.B. Piranesi's design for a vase on stand, Rome ca 1780, appealed more to his English and French patrons. Similar gilt-bronze vases were made in London and Paris, from ca. 1768 onwards..html" title="Meaning of G.B. Piranesi.html" title="Meaning of thumb|right|[[Giovanni Battista Piranesi|G.B. Piranesi">thumb|right|[[Giovanni Battista Piranesi|G.B. Piranesi's design for a vase on stand, Rome ca 1780, appealed more to his English and French patrons. Similar gilt-bronze vases were made in London and Paris, from ca. 1768 onwards.">G.B. Piranesi.html" title="Meaning of thumb|right|[[Giovanni Battista Piranesi|G.B. Piranesi">thumb|right|[[Giovanni Battista Piranesi|G.B. Piranesi's design for a vase on stand, Rome ca 1780, appealed more to his English and French patrons. Similar gilt-bronze vases were made in London and Paris, from ca. 1768 onwards.
But a second neoclassic wave, more severe, more studied (through the medium of engravings) and more consciously archaeological, is associated with the height of the
Napoleon I of France Napoleonic Empire. In France, the first phase of neoclassicism is expressed in the "Louis XVI style", the second phase in the styles we call "Directoire" or "Empire." Italy clung to Rococo until the Napoleonic regimes brought the new archeaological classicism, which was embraced as a political statement by young, progressive, urban Italians with republican leanings.
Image:David - Oath of the Horatii.JPG Oath of the Horatii.html" title="Meaning of thumb thumb|left|250px|David's ''[[Oath of the Horatii''(1784) is not just neoclassical in subject.html" title="Meaning of left|250px|David's ''[[Oath of the Horatii">thumb|left|250px|David's ''[[Oath of the Horatii''(1784) is not just neoclassical in subject">left|250px|David's ''[[Oath of the Horatii">thumb|left|250px|David's ''[[Oath of the Horatii''(1784) is not just neoclassical in subject
The high tide of neoclassicism in painting is exemplified in early paintings by
Jacques-Louis David (''illustration, right'') and
Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres' entire career. David's ''
Oath of the Horatii'' was painted in Rome and made a splash at the
Paris Salon of 1784. Its central perspective is perpendicular to the picture plane, made more emphatic by the dim arcade behind, against which the heroic figures are disposed as in a
frieze, with a hint of the artificial lighting and staging of
opera, and the classical coloring of
Nicholas Poussin. In
sculpture, the most familiar representatives are the Italian
Antonio Canova, the Englishman
John Flaxman and the Dane
Bertel Thorvaldsen.
Image:TBanksThetis.jpg Thomas Banks.html" title="Meaning of thumb thumb|right|300px|''Thetis rising from the sea'' by [[Thomas Banks (1735 - 1805), 1778
Victoria and Albert Museum: low-relief that is as linear as a pencil drawing.html" title="Meaning of right|300px|''Thetis rising from the sea'' by [[Thomas Banks">thumb|right|300px|''Thetis rising from the sea'' by [[Thomas Banks (1735 - 1805), 1778
Victoria and Albert Museum: low-relief that is as linear as a pencil drawing">right|300px|''Thetis rising from the sea'' by [[Thomas Banks">thumb|right|300px|''Thetis rising from the sea'' by [[Thomas Banks (1735 - 1805), 1778
Victoria and Albert Museum: low-relief that is as linear as a pencil drawing In the decorative arts, neoclassicism is exemplified in Empire furniture made in Paris, London, New York, Berlin; in
Biedermeier furniture made in Austria; in
Karl Friedrich Schinkel's museums in Berlin, Sir
John Soane's Bank of England in London and the newly built "
United States Capitol capitol" in
Washington, DC; and in
Josiah Wedgwood Wedgwood's
bas reliefs and "black basaltes"
vases. The Scots architect
Charles Cameron created palatial Italianate interiors for the German-born
Catherine II the Great in Russian St. Petersburg: the style was international.
Indoors, neoclassicism made a discovery of the genuine classic interior, inspired by the rediscoveries at
Pompeii and
Herculaneum, which had started in the late
1740s, but only achieved a wide audience in the
1760s, with the first luxurious volumes of tightly-controlled distribution of ''Le Antichità di Ercolano.'' The antiquities of Herculaneum showed that even the most classicizing interiors of the
Baroque, or the most "Roman" rooms of
William Kent were based on
basilica and
temple ''exterior'' architecture, turned outside in:
pediment pedimented window frames turned into
gilding gilded mirrors, fireplaces topped with temple fronts, now all looking quite bombastic and absurd. The new interiors sought to recreate an authentically Roman and genuinely ''interior'' vocabulary, employing flatter, lighter motifs, sculpted in low
frieze-like relief or painted in monotones ''en camaïeu'' ("like cameos"), isolated medallions or vases or busts or ''bucrania'' or other motifs, suspended on swags of laurel or ribbon, with slender arabesques against backgrounds, perhaps, of "Pompeiian red" or pale tints, or stone colors. The style in France was initially a Parisian style, the "goût Grèc" not a court style. Only when the plump, young king acceded to the throne in 1771 did his fashion-loving Queen bring the "Louis XVI" style to court.
Image:Wfm rsa building.jpg Royal Scottish Academy Building thumb|right|230px|At the [[Royal Scottish Academy Building|Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh, Playfair employs a
Doric order Greek Doric octastyle portico.html" title="Meaning of Royal Scottish Academy.html" title="Meaning of thumb|right|230px|At the [[Royal Scottish Academy Building|Royal Scottish Academy">thumb|right|230px|At the [[Royal Scottish Academy Building|Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh, Playfair employs a
Doric order Greek Doric octastyle portico">Royal Scottish Academy.html" title="Meaning of thumb|right|230px|At the [[Royal Scottish Academy Building|Royal Scottish Academy">thumb|right|230px|At the [[Royal Scottish Academy Building|Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh, Playfair employs a
Doric order Greek Doric octastyle portico
From about 1800 a fresh influx of Greek architectural examples, seen through the medium of etchings and engravings, gave a new impetus to neoclassicism that is called the '''Greek Revival.'''
Neoclassicism continued to be a major force in
academic art through the
19th century and beyond— a constant antithesis to
Romanticism or
Gothic revivals— although from the late
19th century on it had often been considered anti-modern, or even reactionary, in influential critical circles. By the mid-19th century, several European cities - notably
St Petersburg and
Munich - were transformed into veritable museums of Neoclassical architecture.
In American architecture, neoclassicism was one expression of the
American Renaissance movement, ''ca''
1890-
1917; its last manifestation was in
Beaux-Arts architecture, and its very last, large public projects were the
Lincoln Memorial (highly criticised at the time), the
National Gallery of Art National Gallery in Washington, D.C., and the
American Museum of Natural History's Roosevelt Memorial. These were
white elephants as they were built. In the British Raj, Sir
Edwin Lutyens' monumental city planning for
New Delhi marks the glorious sunset of neoclassicism. Soon World War II destroyed all illusions.
Covert neoclassicism in Modern styles
Meanwhile, conservative modernist architects like
Charles Perret in France kept the rhythms and spacing of columnar architecture even in factory buildings. Where a
colonnade would have been decried as "reactionary," a building's
pilaster-like fluted panels under a repeating frieze looked "progressive."
Pablo Picasso experimented with classicizing motifs in the years immediately following
World War I, and the
Art Deco style that peaked in the 1925 Paris ''Exposition des Arts Décoratifs'' often drew on neoclassical motifs without expressing them overtly: severe, blocky commodes by
Émile-Jacques Ruhlmann E. J. Ruhlmann or
Sue et Mare; crisp, extremely low-relief friezes of damsels and gazelles in every medium; fashionable dresses that were draped or cut on the bias to recreate Grecian lines; the art dance of
Isadora Duncan; the
Streamline Moderne styling of US post offices and county court buildings built as late as 1950; and the Roosevelt dime. Neoclassic themes can even be detected in the
Smith Tower, Seattle.
Literary neoclassicism
Image:Prokudin-Gorskii-09.jpg Ostashkov.html" title="Meaning of thumb thumb|275px|Provincial Neoclassicism: a monastery near [[Ostashkov in
Russia (photo from
1910)..html" title="Meaning of 275px|Provincial Neoclassicism: a monastery near [[Ostashkov">thumb|275px|Provincial Neoclassicism: a monastery near [[Ostashkov in
Russia (photo from
1910).">275px|Provincial Neoclassicism: a monastery near [[Ostashkov">thumb|275px|Provincial Neoclassicism: a monastery near [[Ostashkov in
Russia (photo from
1910).
A conscious classicism had entered English literature since the Renaissance. Aside from theattempts at Latin
prosody associated with the University poets, Classicism is detectable in the plays of
Ben Jonson, the formal structures of which contrast sharply with those of
William Shakespeare. The arts do not always march in step, and "neoclassicism" in English literature is associated with the "
Augustan literature Augustan" writers of the early 18th century, all the heirs of
John Dryden and
John Milton Milton. The giant among their inspiring Latin classics was
Virgil. Aside from the Augustan
Alexander Pope, major writers of the period include the realist
Daniel Defoe and the satirist
Jonathan Swift. The ensuing generation of "Romantic" writers had its origins at the height of neoclassicism in the visual arts, about 1800.
In France, the exemplar of literary neoclassicism is the theatre of
Jean Racine. Racine adhered to the "
classical unities" derived from
Aristotle's ''
Poetics''. Neoclassical ideals are also evident in his balanced lines of verse, restraint in emotion, refinement in diction, avoidance of excess. The tragic tone was not offset by moments of realism or humor (as in Shakespeare).
In
1786, the
Germany German literary master
Goethe ended his proto-Romantic
Sturm und Drang period with his trip to Italy (recounted in his
1817 work, ''
Italienische Reise''). Afterwards, he and his colleague
Schiller emulated the themes and sensibility of
Greek tragedy in works like ''
Iphigenia auf Tauris'' (''Iphigenia at Tauris''), ''
Römische Elegien'' (''Roman Elegies''), and ''
Faust''. Neoclassical themes also dominated the work of German poet
Hölderlin.
Neoclassicism Part II: Between the Wars
There was an entire
20th century movement in the Arts which was also called Neo-classicism. It encompassed at least music, philosophy, and literature. It was between the end of
World war I and the end of
World war II. For information on the musical aspects, see
20th century classical music#Neoclassicism and
Neoclassicism (music). For information on the philosophical aspects, see
Great Books
Literary Neoclassicism, 20th-century style
The
20th Century literary movement termed neoclassicism is a movement that rejected the extreme romanticism of (for example)
dada, in favour of restraint, religion (specifically Christianity) and a reactionary political programme. Although the foundations for this movement were laid by
T.E. Hulme, the most famous neoclassicists were
T.S. Eliot and
Wyndham Lewis.
See also
{{commonscat|Neo-Classicist paintings}}
*
1795-1820 in fashion Neoclassical influenced fashions
*
Neoclassicism (music)
*
List of neoclassicistic pieces
*
Nazi architecture
*
Neoclassical economics
*
Stalinist architecture
Further reading
See also the References at
Neoclassical architecture
*Walter Friedlaender, 1952. ''David to Delacroix'', (Originally published in German; reprinted 1980)
*Fritz Novotny, 1971. ''Painting and Sculpture in Europe, 1780-1880'', 2nd edition. (reprinted 1980)
*Hugh Honour, 1968. ''Neo-classicism'' (Reprinted 1977) .
*Robert Rosenblum, 1967. ''Transformations in Late Eighteenth Century Art''
*David Irwin, 1966. ''English Neoclassical Art: Studies in Inspiration and Taste''
*Svend Eriksen, ''Early Neoclassicism in France'' 1974.
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