Who Put the Glitz in Rococo France?

For all those who live curious and love art, it's time for a good story from 18th century France, the Rococo era of art and world history. You might be tempted to call it the century when the aristocrats danced on farmers' backs. There are so many stories to tell. Kings taking over legislatures, churchmen taking over society, the beginnings of slavery in the new world, rebellions in almost every country in the civilized world. Just one problem. In terms of subject matter, Rococo art is one of the most homogenous in art history. Few Rococo paintings exist of anything or anyone other than aristocrats having fun. Especially aristocrats in love and lust. So in this story, the words and images will seldom match. It only makes sense though, since there was seldom a time when the art of an age and the history of an age were as out of sync as they were in 18th century Rococo society. Or perhaps Rococo art did reflect what was actually going on. Perhaps even the Rococo age was a beautiful tapestry of art and history woven together. You see, the true story of Rococo France is how a tiny, almost imperceptible sliver of the population got the other 99.67% to rent a room, hire a band, and pay for a party they weren't even invited to. Those aristocrats with their noses in the air and hands inside a maiden skirts were having such a good time they failed to notice the earthquake that was building below. The revolt of the people paying for the party turned the Rococo era into a quick stop between the religiosity of the preceding Baroque era and the revolutionary romantics that followed. They should have seen it coming because when one of the most important pieces of art from an era is a painting of a hidden man looking up his lover's skirt while her husband pushed her on a swing, you can bet the farm change is going to come. So it was with the Rococo hijinks in Europe during the reign of King Louis XV in France. On the one hand, it was an era of frivolity, extravagance, and aristocracy. But tightly gripped in the other hand was the ancien regime, the status quo, the way things always were and always will be. At least that's how people thought of what became known as the estate system, common throughout Europe in Baroque and Rococo times. The French just did it better than most other countries. So that's today's story. State system, common throughout Europe, divided society into three rigid tiers. The first estate, royalty and clergy. Second estate, nobility. Third estate, commoners. In an 18th century version of supply-side economics, only the third estate paid taxes. Here's how it worked. Of the 27 million people in France in 1789, fewer than 100,000 belonged to the first estate. Since the king claimed his right to rule was divine, ordained by God, the clergy was intertwined with royalty and government. And the clergy itself was uniformly Catholic. But let's take a look back just a bit. In 1598, during the Baroque era, King Henry IV had issued the Edict of Nantes, granting French Protestants religious toleration. 87 years later, this edict was repealed. And from that time forward, all birth, death and marriage records were kept by parish priests. Those without Catholic sacraments had no legal existence, and their offspring were considered bastards with no legal right of inheritance. Entire French educational system was also controlled by the Church, who also ran relief efforts for hospitals throughout France. The Church even had the power to censor anything lawfully printed. They had their own courts of law, owned about 10% of all French lands, and paid no taxes. Now to the second estate. Fewer than 400,000 were considered nobility. They were able to collect feudal dues from peasants, get preferential treatment in courts, and high positions in the Well, to be fair, during the reign of Louis XVI, when the entire system started to teeter under the strain of debt, he was forced to ask the nobility to start paying a pittance of their net earnings to the Crown. You ever paid anything? This left the remaining 26,500,000 people in the lowest estate. Commoners and peasants forced to But all was not totally bleak among this bottom rung. Over time, a middle class began to develop, known as the bourgeoisie. Shop owners, artisans, craftsmen, entrepreneurs, and professionals began to accumulate wealth. During the 50 peak years of the Rococo era, the number of bourgeoisie doubled to over two million people, still less than 10% of the third estate. Nevertheless, it was a sizeable group who scrambled up the social ladder, dressed in fine silks while drinking coffee imported from the West Indies in homes decorated with fine art prints and wallpaper. It was their capital that built theaters in Paris and Bordeaux, funded newspapers, colleges, and even public libraries. By the end of the Rococo era, the bourgeoisie held a substantial part of the national wealth, perhaps as much as 20%, and the most successful among them lived lives of luxury almost on par with nobility. But as the fortunes of the bourgeoisie soared, peasants, who still made up 80 to 90% of the third estate, their fortunes continued to sink. Many lived in the countryside and almost 35% were unemployed. An unlucky string of bad harvests in the 1770s and 1780s made life even harder for farmers and others in the working class who were responsible for most, if not all, of the taxes. Was a recipe for a 10-layer double chocolate cake doomed to fall under the weight of its own extravagance and decadence. And so it did, eventually. But before the fall came Rococo, an era in art history built around the foibles, fragilities, and fancies of that oh-so-tiny ruling class. Pastel colors, overwrought ornamentation, grandiose architecture, extravagant fashion, and, let's just say, loose morals, turned Rococo into a non-stop celebration of the first estate. One problem, the third estate, who again was paying for the party, was catching on to the scam. The seeds of their dissatisfaction had been planted centuries earlier, during the Renaissance. As the world emerged from the religious isolation of the Middle Ages, a new humanism began to take shape. There was a focus on classical learning, human potential, and an interest in intellectual inquiry. It all began to take hold. Now things moved slowly, even after the invention of the printing press in 1440. But new voices did begin to be heard. Galileo and Copernicus discovered new secrets in the heavens. Thinkers like Voltaire, John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, David Hume, Isaac Newton, and René Descartes began to rethink the human condition. Their emphasis on rational thinking, scientific discovery, human potential, and democracy were all bubbling under the surface as Rococo aristocrats partied on. But beneath the pastel colors, ornate architecture, and shallow subject matter of Rococo art, an enlightened whirlwind was developing. Eventually, the top-heaviest state system toppled as the bottom layer realized the power of numbers. During the 18th century, roughly the time of the Rococo era, peasant revolts took place in Venice, Lithuania, Bavaria, Russia, the Holy Roman Empire, Sweden, Denmark, and Norway, Polish Lithuania, Siam, Asia, Spain, Austria, America, Saxony, and of course, France. Most were suppressed, but the first estate couldn't keep the lid on much longer, and by the end of the 18th century, world-changing revolutions took place in both America and France. In the end, Rococo turned out to be a frolicking piece of roadkill as the world stampeded through the heavy church doors of the Baroque era towards enlightenment. And, once again, art and history were artfully woven together in a beautiful tapestry known as the Rococo era. This is Mark, and Deborah, Spanner, wishing you an artful week, month, and life. Live curious, and love art.