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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
