Neoclassicism and Romanticism
Neoclassicism is based on the imitation of models drawn from antiquity in the pursue of beauty. While it reacted against the excesses of Rococo ornamentation and frivolity for curved lines, Neoclassicism retained its noble simplicity. The Neoclassists used beauty as representation of goodness to enhance and promote public morality through art. Johann Joachin Winckelman, Neoclassism's key theorist, proposed the study of ancient art by means of a reasoned method. He perceived Greek art as an elegant idealism of an ideal beauty that transcended nature in its perfection. It epitomized "the noble simplicity and calm grandeur" of art whereby harmony of lines determined form and is more important than color. Winckelman believed that beauty was the perfect expression of an idea, since art was above nature. The ultimate aim of art, therefore, in selecting beautiful subjects found in nature, putrified all imperfection and combine them to form an ideal whole. This would achieve a true representation based on the artist's own personal vision. A moral Utopia was sought in the aesthetic models of the perfection of the ancient world with the artists exploring history and art and the nature of antiquity in their search for universal ideal truths.
The transition from Neoclassicism to Romanticism began with Jacques-Louis David. His Greece and Roman heroes despict a revoluntionary sentiment that is interwoven with dignity and gravity: man was no longer the master of his world. The lucidity, extreme refinement, and exquisitive sense of composition of the best of Neoclassicism works gave way to more troubled, tormented expressions that develop into Romanticism.
The American painter Benjamin West broke with Neoclassicism conventions by depicting the figures in contemporary dress. Romanticism yearned for an alternative to everyday life's reality, aspired to the truth of the soul and the freedom of irrational impulses. Into the 19th century, Neoclassism and Romanticism showed the same characteristic. Both movements reacted to the extravagance of the Rococo style by returning to human values. The difference is that Neoclassism was driven by reason and Romanticism by emotion.
Figurative art played a vital role in Romantism. It encompassed such concepts as man versus nature, the complexity of the psyche, religion, politics, and history. It was an indication of mood and taste, a collective expression of the prevalent European spirit accompanying with extreme emotions. Neoclassicism preoccupied with moral problems, the clash of ideals, and the concept of a harmony that is both external and spiritual. Romantics went further in attempting to explore a deeper, darker level of the human spirit. The notion of antiquity as the essence of natural harmony was challenged. The themes of the Romantics concerns were about the occult, the significant of dreams, notion of infinity, a yearning for distant and exotic land, anxiety, and the predominance of emotions. From using art to exhort the powerful to using nature to depict the sentiment that man is not master of his world, the perception on art as a function changed. David's "Napoleon Crossing The Alps" and Canova's "Napoleon as Mars The Peacemaker" were attempts to glorify men. In Joseph Turner's "Hannibal and His Army Crossing The Alps," however, expressed the fraility of man against powerful nature and therefore instinctual implulsive emotions. Caspa David Friedrich used nature as the backdrop to reflect mans solitude and loneliness in the search of himself and other ideals. Moreover, Goya's "The Collosscus" represented the abandonment of humanity to the destrutive force of instinct.
