Neoclassicism
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Neoclassicism (sometimes rendered as Neo-Classicism) is the name given to quite distinct movements in the visual arts, in literature, in theatre and in music, that were in effect at various times between the 18th and the 20th centuries. What could these "neoclassicisms" have in common? What any "neo"-classicism depends on most fundamentally is a consensus about a body of work that has achieved canonic status. 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 neo-classical failings. Novelty, improvisation, self-expression, blinding inspiration: these are not neoclassical virtues. Neoclassicism exhibits perfect control of an idiom; it does not recreate the forms art from the ground up with each new project, as Modernism demanded. "Make it new" was the modernist credo of the poet Ezra Pound.
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, Raphael, Nicholas Poussin, 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 neo-classic writer; Ming ceramics pay homage to Sung celadon porcelains; Italian 15th century humanists learn to write a "Roman" hand we call italic (which happens to be Carolingian, but no matter); Neo-Babylonian culture is a neoclassical revival, and in Persia the "classic" religion of Zoroaster is revived after centuries, to "re-Persianize" a culture that had fallen away from its own classic Achaemenean past.
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2 Covert Neoclassicism in Moderne styles 3 Neoclassicism in music 4 Literary neoclassicism |
Neoclassicism in architecture and the visual arts
In the visual arts, the movement called neoclassicism began after ca 1765, as a reaction both against the surviving Baroque and the Rococo, and a desire to return to perceived "purity" of the arts of Rome and to a less specific idea of the arts of Ancient Greece (where almost no western artist had actually been) and to a lesser extent to the examples of Renaissance Classicism of the 16th century.
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.
Neoclassicism first gained influence in England and France, through a generation of French art students trained in Rome and the influential writings of Johann Joachim Winkelmann, and was quickly adopted in progressive circles in Sweden. At first, classicizing decor was grafted onto familiar European forms, but a second wave, more severe, more studied (through the medium of engravings) and more consciously archaeological, is associated with the height of the Napoleonic Empire. The first phase of neoclassicism in France 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 that was embraced as a political statement by young, progressive, urban Italians with republican leanings.
The high tide of Neoclassicism is exemplified in paintings by Jacques-Louis David and Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres; sculpture by the Italian Antonio Canova, the Englishman John Flaxman or the Dane Bertel Thorwaldsen; Empire furniture made in Paris, London, New York, Berlin; Biedermeyer furniture in Austria; Karl Friedrich Schinkel's museums in Berlin or Sir John Soame's Bank of England in London or a new building called a "capitol" in Washington, DC; Wedgwood's bas-reliefs and "black basaltes" vases. The Scots architect John 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: pedimented window frames turned into 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.
Neoclassicism continued to be a major force in academic art through the 19th century— a constant antithesis to Romanticism or Gothic revivals— and beyond, although from the late 19th century on it has often been considered anti-modern or even reactionary in influential critical circles. In American architecture, neoclassicism was one expression of the American Renaissance movement, ca 1890 - 1917; its last form was in Beaux-Arts architecture, and its very last large public projects were the Lincoln Memorial (highly criticised at the time) and the 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 Moderne 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 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 soon cut on the bias to recreate Grecian lines, the art dance of Isadora Duncan, the International Fascist streamlined moderne styling of US post offices and county court buildings built as late as 1950, the Roosevelt dime— neoclassic themes can even be detected in the Smith Tower, Seattle.
Neoclassicism in music
In music, neoclassicism was a 20th century development, particularly popular in the period between the two World Wars, in which composers drew inspiration from music of the 18th century, though some of the inspiring canon was drawn as much from the Baroque period as the Classical - for this reason, music which draws influence specifically from the Baroque is sometimes termed neo-baroque.
Neoclassicism can be seen as a reaction to the prevailing trend of 19th century Romanticism to sacrifice internal balance and order in favour of more overtly emotional writing. Neoclassicism makes a return to balanced forms and often emotional restraint, as well as 18th century compositional processes and techniques. However, in the use of modern instrumental resources such as the full orchestra, which had greatly expanded since the 18th century, and advanced harmony, neoclassical works are distinctly 20th century.
Igor Stravinsky composed some of the best known neoclassical works— in his ballet Pulcinella, for example, he used themes which he believed to be by Giovanni Pergolesi (it later transpired that many of them were not, though they were by contemporaries). Paul Hindemith was another neoclassicist, as was Bohuslav Martinu, who revived the Baroque concerto grosso form.
List of neoclassicistic pieces
Literary neoclassicism
The arts do not always march in step, and "Neoclassicism" in English literature is associated with the "Augustan" writers of the early 18th century, all the heirs of John Dryden and Milton. The giant among their inspiring Latin classics was Virgil. Major writers of the period have included Daniel Defoe, Jonathan Swift, Alexander Pope. The ensuing period of "Romantic" writers had its origins at the height of neoclassicism in the visual arts, about 1800.
In France, the hallmark of neoclassicism is the theater of Jean Racine, his balanced lines of verse, restraint in emotion, refinement in diction, without excesses, his artistic consistency, so that the tragic tone was not offset by moments of realism or humor (as in Shakespeare), and his formal adherence to the "unities" extracted from Aristotle's Poetics.
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