Romanticism

Romanticism a word that makes one think that it is a piece of art that shows love, a man and a woman. But it is not quite that, romanticism can mean freedom, rebellion, it could symbol intuition, emotion, the individual, and truth. It refers to art work that states feelings, moods, and dominates. An individual expression of experiences which cannot and could not be evaluated or assessed in purely rational or materialistic terms. Romanticism was one of the most unique ism that would most certainly be remembered most.

Romanticism started during the time of Neo-Classicism, many disliked the view that Neo-Classicism and so they began a new style. Romanticism valued human emotions, instincts, over rational, rule based approach to questions of value and meaning in the arts, society, and politics. Romanticism can be charactized by formal stylization; the compositional is simplification, and a preference for graphic techniques and expanses of color. Another thing that also inspired the art movement was the attitude towards the landscape.

However romanticism wasn’t accepted until 1830. The intention for Romanticism was to create a new world to enter the wreckage of the old; the time for innovation, experiment, new social systems and Utopias, new concepts and morality. A romantic was one who had broken loose from the rigid controls of the past and felt free to move ahead. Romantic artists explored specific values of individuality which Neo-Classicism ignored; the values of intuition, instinct, and even the more in accessible aspects of feelings which reach and exceed the boundaries beyond of reason.

There were four non art history facts that were either influenced or affected the art movement were; the American and French Revolutions, the restoration between the Greeks and Turks, and the Age of the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment had a negative effect on the romantics; they attacked the Church. The two artists that are quite interesting to learn about from this period are Eugene Delacroix and Theodore Gericault. They might not be Michelangelo or Paul Klee or any other big shot artist but they are still artists, artists that have done beautiful work and some most incredible art pieces.

Eugene Delacroix, born on April 26, 1791, in the month of the Taurus, in Paris suburb called Charenton-Saint-Maurice. He was presumed to be premature, but some expect that his real father was Charles Maurice de Talleyrand, instead of Charles-Francois Delacroix. However Delacroix turned a blind ear to them for he believed that Charles-Francois was his true father. He showed an exceptional talent for music, for the cathedral; who had been a friend of Mozart, Delacroix learnt how to play the piano, violin, and the guitar.

He was only nine or ten when according to his friend critic Theophite Silvestre, when he went to Louvre. When he was seven his father died, his mother packed up everything and took Delacroix and Henriette and left to live in Paris. His two older brothers were away at war. He was taught by Pierre-Narcisse Guerin and also by Theodore Gericault at Lycee Louis-le-Grand. However he was not on good terms with Theodore; who was seven years his senior to Eugene. Eugene had turned a deaf ear to Gericault’s injunction from the first time he meet him. He felt an instinctive affinity to Theodore’s ideas.

It wasn’t until 10 years later after they met that Gericault died at age 32. His art piece Bark of Dante was debt to Theodore Gericault; who he met. Everywhere in his art one can see in the exploitation of the dramatic potential in the waterscape, or in the use of diagonals to convey the sense of struggle and movement in the form of the figures. The bold emphasis on their musculature is incredible. However the theme is and was a thoroughly respectable one. It was free of anything that might rile official dom. After it had been exhibited at the Salon, the French government paid 2,000 francs for it.

In his later years he became called “a volcanic crater artistically concealed behind bouquets of flowers” or even sometimes called The Great Romantic. He could be a lover of women and a work fanatic, an adept at social trivia and a man of wider ranging erudition not only mastery of esthetics but an impressive grasp of music, theater, and literature. His first foreign journey was to England, where he learnt how to ride on horses, which would come in handy for the Moroccan desert. Where he went mostly for politic reasons and not only was it for art it was also to escape the civilization of Paris.

He produced over 100 sketches and paintings of the people, their costumes or just the landscape. He demonically turned out more than 850 paintings, thousands of sketches, watercolors, and drawings of art. In his lifetime he produced more than 20 works that were inspired by Shakespeare. He continued to make art till he died; for he was trying to reconcile opposites to see art as a whole. For part of Eugene’s genius laid in his capacity to learn from others. He died in 1863 in Paris, France. One of his artwork titled Orphan Girl at Cemetery which was worked and finished between 1823-1824.

Delacroix used oil on canvas with this art. It shows a girl with hair pilled on her head and she is looking to sky. In the background you can just see the church and some crosses. There is a sense of sadness and loneliness in her eyes and her look. Theodore Gericault was born in 1791 into a bourgeois family in Rouen. Gericault moved to Paris as a boy. He has been fascinated by all aspects of equestrian such as races, jumping and riding schools. He was also overwhelmingly attracted by the clashes between individuals; he investigated their various forms in journeys which in England led him to observe the human deluxe.

Theodore was educated in the tradition of English sporting art by the Carle Vernet, and even by Pierre-Narcisse Guerin, who disliked his temperament but saw a talent in him. He then left and learnt at the Louvre for six years when he realized that he preferred the vitality over the prevailing school of Neo-Classicism. He exhibited his Wounded Cuirassier at the Salon in 1814 and also his first major work The Charging Chasseur at the Salon in 1812. Gericault was a merry, gregarious man whose tastes as a bon vivant did not preclude a deep-seated sympathy for the under dog.

He went to Florence, Rome, and Naples in 1816-1817, mostly to escape a romantic entanglement with his aunt. Gericault became fascinated by Michelangelo; which helped inspire his art piece the Race of the Barberi Horses. After he went back to France in 1821 he painted a series of portraits of his friend Dr. Etienne-Jean Georget’s patients; each containing a different diagnosis. Theodore drew his subjects from the crudest parts of reality; he visited slaughter houses, morgues, asylums, delving into the morbid events reported in newspapers, observing the devastating corporeal strength of animals.

Some of his artworks consist of horses, lions, and tigers. Gericault was also one of the first artist to take up the newly invented process of lithography, producing a serveing of 13 pickes illustrating the life of the English poor. He was in the process of painting new artworks, when his health stroked a final note. Theodore was always riding for his among his passions was horses. He owned them, painted them, and even tamed them. His fatal illness grew on to a riding trip which injured his spine and caused him to waste. He died after a slow period of suffering, in Paris 1834 at the age of 3

Art History: Neoclassicism: (1750 – 1830) The term Neoclassicism refers to the classical revival in European art, architecture, and interior design that lasted from the mid-eighteenth to the early nineteenth century. This period gave rebirth to the art of ancient Rome and Greece and the Renaissance as an opposition to the ostentatious Baroque and Rococo art that preceded the movement. Although the movement spread throughout Western Europe, France and England were the countries that used the style most frequently in their arts and architecture, using the classical elements to express ideas of nationalism, courage, and sacrifice.

The movement was inspired by the discovery of ancient Italian artifacts at the ruins of Herculaneum and Pompeii. Also influential in the development was the cultural studies of German art historian Johann J. Winckelmann who claimed that the most important elements of classical art were “noble simplicity and calm grandeur. ” Neoclassicism emphasized rationality and the resurgence of tradition. Neoclassical artists incorporated classical styles and subjects, including columns, pediments, friezes, and other ornamental schemes in their work.

They were inspired by the work of Homer and Plutarch and John Flaxmann’s illustrations for the Illiad and Odyssey. Other classic models included Virgil, Raphael, and Poussin among others. Neoclassical painters took extra care to depict the costumes, settings, and details of classical subject matter with as much accuracy as possible. Much of the subject matter was derived from classical history and mythology. The movement emphasized line quality over color, light, and atmosphere. The height of Neoclassicism was displayed in the paintings of Jacques-Louis David and Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres.

Essay I During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in Europe, change was always constant, and two different movements that were brought about by this change were the Enlightenment and the Romantic movements. These two different schools of thought had both things in common as well as differing opinions. An example of how this is applied is when the matter of God and religion is discussed.

These two different views encompass a lot of similarities with regards to theological matters, but the main difference between the Enlightened and Romantic views of God is that Enlightenment does not put as much focus and emphasis on such matters as Romantic thinking does. The Enlightenment era was brought about during the time of scientific inquisition and governmental criticism. During this time, philosophers were writing sociological doctrines about how man is best governed, and scientists were pushing the boundaries and frontiers of their respective fields even farther.

During this time, which also included such events as the French Revolution, religious affairs took a back seat to issues that were of a secular nature. As opposed to times before, where religious persecution was encouraged, thinkers of the Enlightenment period highly promoted religious toleration, and it was a more common policy during the Enlightenment than any time before that. There was a higher abundance of different religions and denominations because religion was not seen as imperative as it was before because there were many new things to learn that did not involve the church.

One similarity between romanticism and the enlightenment is that each movement held an unconventional way of seeing God. Each movement valued an individual relationship with God, rather than the conventional way of congregationalism. Each movement was disdainful towards formal church groupings and the imposition of religious doctrines upon the individual. The Romantic Movement was similar to the Enlightenment in several ways. They were both influential events that were quite impactful, and they stressed unconventional methodology.

These movements differed as well, and a main difference was that the enlightenment emphasized things that were within rationality, reason, and could be proved. Romanticism tended not to focus on such things, because it investigated the realms of human emotion, while the enlightenment was based on intellectual and logical principles. Hence, Romanticism held more of an interest of the relationship between God and the individual, because it had a lot to do with human emotion and things that were considered to be beyond human comprehension and reason.

The enlightenment shied away from religious topics in order to focus on such fields as science and government. The Enlightenment and Romanticism both held things in common as well as significantly differed. The enlightened mind was more inclined to think about science, and the romantic mind was more prone to theological thoughts. Each were similar in the fact that they believed in the individual discovering the truth about God rather than blindly listening to a group’s opinion. In general, each movement saw God in a similar way with different details.

The Seduction is a poem written by Eileen McCauley. It is about a young and vulnerable sixteen year old girl whose head is filled with thoughts about love and romance portrayed in teenage magazines. These fake ideals lead her to believe that a boy, whom she meets at a party, truly loves her, when really he is just getting her drunk so her resistance will be lower and she will give in to what he wants from her: sex. Three months later she discovers that she is pregnant, she blames teen magazines for filling her head with false ideal of romance.

In the very first verse of the poem, the writer introduces the scene of the poem, “He led her to the quiet bricks of the Birkenhead docks, far past the silver stream of the traffic throughout the city, far from the blind windows of the tower blocks. ” This tells us of how there is nobody around to witness what they do. It becomes clear to the reader at the beginning of the poem that he is trying to get her drunk, as when the poet is describing the moment they met, one of the first things he is doing is buying her drinks. We also see this at a later stage when they are at the docks. He handed her the vodka” – this quote proves that he is making an effort to try and get the girl drunk because the alcohol will affect her decisions and causes her to agree to things she normally wouldn’t. Also In the second verse, the boy mutters “little slag. ”

This shows us that the boy thinks very little of the girl and lacks respect for women. We then discover that the girl is under some sort of spell because as he talked about football, “she had nodded, quite enchanted” this shows us that she is keen to listen to what he has to say. With his eyes as blue as iodine” – the use of the word ‘iodine’ used to describe his eyes suggests that there is something dark about him as iodine is a dark blue/black acid. In the fifth stanza, the boy mentions that he goes down to the river when he should be in school or having dinner with “a bag of shimmering paint thinner. ” This shows us that he doesn’t spend much, if any time in school and that he uses the paint thinner as a drug. If the girl was sober, this would be a clear sign to stay away from him but he has lowered her resistance by getting her drunk.

We can tell that the girl is a young teenager who enjoys school and wants to do well as she talks about her education in an enthusiastic way. The beginning of the sixth stanza makes us realise how precocious this girl really is, “so she followed him there, all high white shoes, all wide blue eyes and bottles of vodka. ” This sentence shows us that she is trying to grow up too fast because this is what the magazines made her believe was the right thing to do. The poets then says “then when he swiftly contrived to kiss her, his kiss was scented by Listerine” this tells us that he was prepared for what he wanted to do.

Even though we realise that the girl is very precocious, we discover how immature she actually is as it says “she stifled a giggle, reminded of numerous stories from teenage magazines” this also tells us that she has read about moments like these but hasn’t experienced them until now. The next stanza begins with “When she discovers she was three months gone” this shows us that the poet has used euphemism to emphasise the harsh reality of what this girl is going through. And she ripped up all her My Guy and Jackie photo comics” I think she does this because the magazines are what filled her head with false ideals about what romance and love should be like. She is angry that the media lied to her and that’s why she ripped then all up. The next stanza then says “and on that day, she broke the heels of her high white shoes and flung them at the wall” she does this because they were the shoes she wore on the night of the party to make her look and feel older.

She doesn’t want them anymore as she realises that she doesn’t want to be older because of the massive problem that she is faced with. The eighth stanza is mainly telling us about what the magazines have told this girl about what her life should be like “full of glitzy fashion features and stories of love and romance, where strangers could lead you to bright new worlds, and how would you know if you never took a chance? ” This reflects on the consequences of what she did last night and how the media made her think she should take a chance.

The ninth stanza says “full of fresh fruit diets” this shows us that she won’t be able to try out any of these diets as she is now three months pregnant. “Now with a softly rounded belly, she was sickened every morning by stupid stupid promises, only tacitly made” This shows us that she is reminded every morning of the huge mistake that she made that night. Also the word “stupid” is repeated twice, maybe to emphasise that she regrets her actions a lot.

The poet then states in the ten and eleventh stanza the things that the girl would be missing out on. This reminds us that the girl is so young and is faced with problems that she shouldn’t have to face at that age. “With a glass of lager-shandy, on a carpeted floor” this sentence makes the fantasy of romance seem far better than what is really is. The use of the words “carpeted floor” makes it seem luxurious and “lager shandy” makes it seem much more innocent as it is a lighter drink than the vodka she drunk the night of the party.

In the last few stanzas, the poet states things that the girl would rather do than become pregnant “But then again, better to be smoking scented drugs or festering, invisibly unemployed” This shows us that she is almost going into a state of depression. She then describes being ‘stuck in a feminine void’, which basically means accidentally becoming pregnant. In the very last stanza, it becomes clear to us that she is very ashamed of herself because the poet says “better to turn away, move away, fade away, than to have the neighbours whisper ‘you always looked the type. ’