by Jeanne Willette | Feb 5, 2010 | Modern, Modern Philosophy
KANT AND CRITICAL REASON The eighteenth century British philosopher, David Hume, suggested that we believe that there is a connection between cause and effect. For example. fire causes flame and results in an effect of smoke. Were it not for this belief system, we...
by Jeanne Willette | Jan 29, 2010 | Modern, Modern Philosophy
CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON (1789) Kant’s Copernican Revolution This concept of critique was central to Enlightenment philosophy, coming from the Greek word “krinein”, meaning to “separate” or to “discern”, which is the origin of the word...
by Jeanne Willette | Jan 22, 2010 | Modern, Modern Culture
FINDING THE AVANT-GARDE Theory of the Avant-Garde In his book, The Theory of the Avant-Garde (1984), Peter Bürger stressed the historical basis of the avant-garde. The rise of the avant-garde was directly linked to the rise of the middle class and its allegiance to...
by Jeanne Willette | Jan 22, 2010 | Modern, Modern Art, Modern Art Podcasts, Modern Culture
THE MODERNISM OF INGRES Part One Often assumed to be the bastion of conservatism in French art, Ingres was actually an astute observer of his own time and was, therefore, thoroughly modern. Like Gros and Girodet, Ingres had to find his own way past both his teacher,...
by Jeanne Willette | Jan 15, 2010 | Modern, Modern Art
THE ORIGINS OF THE AVANT-GARDE ROMANTICISM Art and the Avant-Garde The term “avant-garde” is a military one, borrowed from the French phrase, denoting the advance body of the army. This small group of soldiers goes out in advance of the main group to...
by Jeanne Willette | Jan 8, 2010 | Modern, Modern Art
THE QUARREL OVER CONTENT The End of Classicism The Romantic era was Janus-faced, facing the present and commenting upon it while turning away for current events in order to yield to the lure of fantasy, legend, myth, and exoticism. On one hand, Antoine-Jean Gros...
by Jeanne Willette | Jan 8, 2010 | Modern, Modern Art, Modern Art Podcasts, Modern Culture, Podcast
FOUNDING ROMANTICISM Part Two Two of the founding members of French Romanticism, Gros and Girodet, were Napoléonic artists who specialized in military glory and romantic escapism, respectively. Although they were both followers of David, both artists moved away from...
by Jeanne Willette | Jan 1, 2010 | Modern, Modern Aesthetics, Modern Art, Modern Culture
ROMANTICISM AS HISTORY IN FRANCE Neoclassicism was a historicist revival of an ancient style that acquired political and social implications during a time of turbulent change. Calm and serene, Neoclassicism lent itself well to noble subject matter that depicted the...
by Jeanne Willette | Dec 25, 2009 | Modern, Modern Art, Modern Culture
PAINTING IN THE ACADEMY The Role of History Painting The roots of academic art in France were long and deep and were integral to the tradition of painting in the École des Beaux-Arts, as well in as the provincial academies. In fact, within the art circles in France,...
by Jeanne Willette | Dec 25, 2009 | Modern, Modern Art, Modern Art Podcasts, Modern Culture, Podcast
THE EARLY ROMANTICS: GROS AND GIRODET Part One Although the French Revolution caused an upheaval in French art, there was an attempt to use Neo-Classicism to return to the pure and historical origins of art. However, compelling contemporary events and a new regime...
by Jeanne Willette | Dec 18, 2009 | Modern, Modern Art
SCULPTURE FOR THE PUBLIC Training and Execution of Sculptors The most prestigious place to study, work, live and exhibit art was Paris, whether one was French or not. Nowhere was the system of education and training more rigorous. For the artists outside of Paris,...
by Jeanne Willette | Dec 11, 2009 | Modern, Modern Aesthetics, Modern Art, Modern Art Criticism, Modern Art Podcasts, Modern Culture, Podcast
FRENCH ROMANTICISM Romanticism in France was an artistic movement that was born of the excitement of Napoleonic art and its depictions of the glory and horrors of total war. But after the Emperor was deposed, the new generation of artists could find...
by Jeanne Willette | Dec 11, 2009 | Modern, Modern Art, Modern Culture
FRENCH REVOLUTION IN ART By the eighteenth century being part of the beaux-arts rather than being involved in “crafts” was often a matter of class. Artists tended to come from the middle class and shared the aspirations of upward social mobility typical of...
by Jeanne Willette | Dec 4, 2009 | Modern, Modern Art
THE ACADEMY IN FRANCE The seventeenth century was the century in which the modern idea of “nation” or of a modern “state” came into being, based upon the idea of absolute rule. The territory under the absolute despot might be disparate and...
by Jeanne Willette | Nov 27, 2009 | Modern, Modern Aesthetics, Modern Art, Modern Art Criticism, Modern Art Podcasts, Podcast
ROMANTICISM AND CHANGING METHODOLOGIES IN ART HISTORY What is the impact of methodologies of art history upon the recounting of the history of art? A methodology is a way of telling or constructing the past. This act of re-construction is, in fact, as Hayden White...
by Jeanne Willette | Nov 27, 2009 | Modern, Modern Aesthetics, Modern Art, Modern Culture
NEO-CLASSICAL SCULPTURE AND ARCHITECTURE Canova and Ledoux When Johann Winckelmann (1717-1768) advised eighteenth century artists to imitate the Greeks, he was probably thinking more of sculpture than of painting and upon sculptors fell a particular burden–to...
by Jeanne Willette | Nov 20, 2009 | Modern, Modern Aesthetics, Modern Art, Modern Culture
NEO-CLASSICISM IN FRANCE The Early Years In any academy, whether from the seventeenth or the eighteenth or the nineteenth century, history painting was the most elevated form of painting due to the designated “important” themes treated by the artists. In...
by Jeanne Willette | Nov 13, 2009 | Modern, Modern Aesthetics, Modern Art, Modern Art Podcasts, Modern Culture, Podcast
THE ACADEMY AND THE AVANT-GARDE IN FRANCE The artists of the French Academy and the artists of the French avant-garde are often presented as being protagonists, but, in fact, each group defined itself in terms of the other. The French Academy was the bastion of the...
by Jeanne Willette | Nov 13, 2009 | Modern, Modern Aesthetics, Modern Art, Modern Culture
NEOCLASSICISM AND THE ANTIQUE The Rediscovery of the Past Classicism, since the Renaissance, had been the foundation of an expression of all that was superior and exhaled in the fine arts. Capable of morphing, the classicism of the Renaissance, of Raphael and...
by Jeanne Willette | Nov 6, 2009 | Modern, Modern Culture
The Industrial Revolution An English Invention For the artist of the modern period, the most essential problem was how to depict the modern: as a new style, as new content, as a new attitude? Each generation would find its own answer, only to have the next generation...
by Jeanne Willette | Oct 31, 2009 | Modern, Modern Art, Modern Art Podcasts, Modern Culture, Podcast
ROMANTICISM AND NATIONALISM Romanticism was a form of modern consciousness that was expressed as art style, as an attitude of individualism, as a political stance, and as a new way of being an artist. In the nineteenth century, modern nations were beginning to take...
by Jeanne Willette | Oct 30, 2009 | Modern, Modern Culture
Napoléon and the Birth of Modern France Napoléonic Art The small island of Corsica lies just below the Mediterranean coast of France but it was long under the sway of the Italian region. After the war with Genoa, the Treaty of Versailles of 1768 ceded the island of...
by Jeanne Willette | Oct 23, 2009 | Modern, Modern Aesthetics, Podcast
AESTHETICS AND TRE RISE OF ROMANTICISM Emerging in the mid-eighteenth century, Aesthetics is a branch of philosophy which seeks to define “art.” The formulation of aesthetics as a separate aspect of Enlightenment thinking was a project of British and...
by Jeanne Willette | Oct 23, 2009 | Modern, Modern Art
ART AND THE ENLIGHTENMENT Rococo and Revolution From the early eighteenth century on, the visual arts, from painting to interior décor, were markers of class and harbingers of the Revolution to come. A late expression of the pompous and grandiose Baroque, the soft...
by Jeanne Willette | Oct 16, 2009 | Modern, Modern Aesthetics, Modern Art Podcasts, Modern Culture, Podcast
THE AESTHETICS OF ROMANTICISM Part One With the decline of religious commissions and with the end of aristocratic patronage, the modern artist was left dependent upon the State and the new art public. In the past, it had been sufficient to define “art” as...
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