Rococo art, 2022

By the beginning of the 18th century, the religious wars were largely over, and nation-states dominated Europe. The large chunk of land labeled Germany here is misleading. After the Thirty Years' War, Germany was broken into more than 300 small states, and would not recover economically until the 19th century. Spain continued its political and economic decline. Italy remained fragmented and economically weak, although many artists sought out opportunities to study in Rome, still seen as Europe's cultural center. England was in political and economic ascendancy. Eventually, industrial innovation would give Britain Europe's most powerful economy. In this lecture, however, I'm going to focus on France, and French politics at this point in history were complicated. Louis XIV had destroyed Protestantism, secured France's boundaries, and created a unified nation-state. But, his wars came close to bankrupting the country. More importantly, the strategy of essentially keeping French aristocrats in an elegant holding cell, the Palace of Versailles, fell apart under his successor, Louis XV. The aristocracy re-established their dominance, moved back to Paris, and if anything, tightened their economic grip over the peasants. I think you know how the story of this selfish and self-indulgent aristocracy ends. But, meanwhile, the aristocrats sure were having fun, and nothing captures the frivolous last days of the French aristocracy better than the art of the Rococo period. The leading Rococo painter was Watteau, who has completely disappeared from the College Board list, but I can imagine you're being asked to identify the art historical period of a Watteau painting, so I'll show you a few. Watteau deeply admired Rubens and imitated him, but a comparison of these two paintings, which had a similar theme, also highlights the transition from the Baroque to Rococo. So, what differences do you notice? Baroque art is heavier, more dramatic, more solid, somehow. One of the art historians I listened to described Rococo as Baroque with the wind taken out of its sails. The figures are smaller, the colors are more pastel, the subject matter is usually deliberately lighter, and the love is less serious and usually illicit. This may seem an odd introduction to our required Rococo work, The Swing, but I think this movie opening offers quite a brilliant vision of the decadent French nobility in the Rococo era. The movie is based on a famous novel, Dangerous Liaisons, which was published in 1782, just seven years before the French Revolution broke out. The two main characters, shown here in their movie versions, are rivals and ex-lovers, who use seduction as a cruel game and as a weapon to humiliate and degrade others. This clip is the movie's opening. It depicts the elaborate dressing ritual and artificial costuming of France's aristocrats. This painting takes Rococo to a whole new level of poof, a poof of pink, as our Khan Academy experts put it. The fellow hiding in the bushes is up to no good, and his lady friend seems pretty pleased about that. One rather odd detail, the swing is possibly being pushed by a bishop. We know from an original source that this is what the patron requested, but there is some dispute over whether Fragonard was really painting a bishop here or just an unattractive layman. Still, the painting may offer a not-too-subtle clue about the church's alliance with this rather decadent aristocracy. Stay tuned for Voltaire. The alternative title of the work is Happy Accidents in the Swing. So, what do you think? What was the happy accident? Is it the lost shoe? Is it the chance for her lover to look up at her? The lost shoe, by the way, may symbolize the loss of virginity. The girl in the swing is wearing a fashionable berger hat, that is a shepherdess hat. That adds an element of irony, since shepherds are normally associated with virtue because they live close to nature, uncorrupted by the temptations of the city. It may also be a shout-out to the popular philosophy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, whom we will encounter in upcoming lectures. Rousseau believed that civilization corrupted nature, and that human beings were happiest and most virtuous when they lived closer to nature. Marie Antoinette famously played at being a shepherdess at her own little country home. The operative word here is played, and indeed Rococo reminds me of mannerism in its emphasis on masks and artificiality. Pop culture for 40! Where does the image on the right come from? I bet you all answered that. I know that all four of my grandchildren could have answered that in the Disney movie Frozen. A character named Anna swings in front of a frogginard wannabe. Note that Disney omitted the dubious lover looking up her skirts. They're just spoiled sports. We will return to this work in our last unit, but I thought it made sense to introduce it here, since the Nigerian-British artist has created a deliberate homage to the Fragonard painting. So, what from the Fragonard painting is missing from this African work? Well, she's missing her head, a not very subtle reference to what's going to happen to a lot of these frivolous aristocrats in the French Revolution. What else is missing, and why? We don't see either the dubious old man pushing the swing or the lover hiding in the bushes. So, who's looking up her skirt? We are. Like much installation art, which we will encounter in our final unit, we the viewers are active participants in the scene, and, if you will, in the act of wire-ism represented here. I mentioned earlier in this lecture that art will display more cross-cultural influences. So, what strange cross-cultural tale does the cloth she's wearing tell? The Dutch wax textiles are an Indonesian batik design that was produced by Asian textile workers under the direction of British industrialists for West African consumers. What's more, African artists would develop these textile designs, and they later came to symbolize African culture and even the African drive for independence. I've included another example on the upper right. It's advertised as Dutch wax African kente cloth and is manufactured in Worcester, Massachusetts. Meanwhile, though staying on the theme of high fashion, here's one other famous Rococo artist who slipped off our list. Francois Boucher's patron was King Louis XV's extremely influential mistress, Madame de Pompadour. Here again, you see the lush but cultivated landscape, a garden, not a scene from nature, the little lapdog, and, again, so much pink. And here's another over-the-top Boucher work I could easily imagine the College Board asking you to identify the art historical period of this work. It is Rococo to the core. So this is one of those summary slides that I borrowed from another teacher and slightly modified. Rococo art is light-hearted and frivolous. The content is less likely to be religious, more likely to be amorous. The major patrons were aristocrats, not the church, and these paintings were often purchased for private use in the home. The colors are light and pastel, and we see little of any chiaroscuro. It's hardly surprising that a generation of artists, especially those who were unsympathetic with the frivolous aristocracy, decided to take a different path. But before we travel down that path and explore the art of the Enlightenment, I want to discuss one more required work. It's a work that bridges the gap between Rococo and Enlightenment art, which is where we're heading next. Elizabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun was a very successful painter in an era when women had a very hard time breaking into the art world. She made her money painting aristocrats. She also hung out with aristocrats and supported aristocrats' right to rule. Her pro-royalist political views forced her to flee from France when the Revolution broke out. However, she continued to make a living from aristocratic portraits, especially of the Russian nobility, and she lived to the ripe old age of 85. Vigée Le Brun's most famous subject, and a personal friend, was the notorious French queen Marie Antoinette. The artist painted more than 30 portraits of Marie Antoinette, and here's one of the most famous. So, in what ways does this portrait show Rococo style, and in what ways does it introduce the themes from Rousseau that I mentioned earlier? We see the pastel colors, the pink roses, the over-the-top costumes, but we also see a setting that is a somewhat less thoroughly tamed nature. This was an 18th century effort at spin. Vigée Le Brun was trying hard to make Marie Antoinette into a more sympathetic figure to appease an increasingly critical French public. Note the date of the painting, just two years before the Revolution broke out in 1789. Spoiler alert for AP World History, the political spin did not work. Here's an earlier self-portrait by our required artist, which could jump right out of a Fragonard painting, except the artist is looking straight at us, self-confident in her art and her status as one of Europe's leading artists and one of the few women admitted to the French Academy. By the way, her membership in the Academy was rescinded after the French Revolution because the revolutionaries, following the theories of Rousseau, believed that men and women belonged in different spheres. Men should run the world, women should stay at home with the children. And here's a later self-portrait, this time with her own daughter. Note that it is much more natural in style and composition. In fact, this painting caused a scandal because she showed her teeth. This artist is dropped off the list, although she used to appear on past AP exams. Adelaide Labille-Guillard is one of the few other women who was admitted to the French Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture. Interestingly, this artist was a full-throated supporter of the revolution. On the right, you see her portrait of Robespierre. He was a leading figure in the Reign of Terror that sent so many of her former patrons to the guillotine. But this artist also got kicked out of the Royal Academy. Revolutionary sympathies notwithstanding, she was still a mere female. This is our required work. Vigée Le Brun painted this self-portrait after she went into exile in Rome. So what do you think? Does this seem like a Rococo work? What kind of personality does it convey? Or does her naturalism and her determination to make her way as an individual signal that she is more of a figure of the Enlightenment? I think the answer is probably both. But it's to the Enlightenment that we turn next.