DELACROIX THE ROMANTIC Part One A member of the famous Bohemian crowd of French avant-garde art, Delacroix was considered the rebellious leader of French Romanticism. Like all artists of his generation, he had missed out on Napoléonic glory but found excitement in the...
Kant and Aesthetics The Creation of Artistic Freedom and Art-for-Art’s Sake France became the titular home of the Enlightenment because of the necessity of opposing the decadence of the ancien régime, but it must be recalled that there were numerous important...
INGRES, THE NUDES, AND CONSPICUOUS CONSUMPTION Part Two By the middle of his artistic life, Ingres had reached the pinnacle of his career as the ruler of the Academy in France. Although the artist claimed to uphold the principles of classical art, his approach to the...
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...
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...
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...
