romanticism: introduction
DESCRIPTION
Introduction & overview of Romanticism in Art History.TRANSCRIPT
What do these 3 images all have in common? (1)
What do these 3 images all have in common? (2)
What do these 3 images all have in common? (3)
What do these 2 images have in common?
What do these images all have in common?
What do they ALL have in common?
Romanticism (Late 18th century to the second half
of the nineteenth century)
Source: Otis College
Romanticism was a literary, musical and artistic movement. A reaction against Neoclassicsm and the Enlightenment. Focus on the imagination & emotion. Interest in the individual – the SELF. Appreciation for the ‘common man’, nature, melancholy. The sublime: feelings of terror and beauty at the same time
German painter Caspar David Friedrich said that "the artist's feeling is his law“.
William Wordsworth said poetry should be "the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings“.
Charles Baudelaire defined it as: “…neither a choice of subject nor exact truth, but in the way of feeling.”
http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/english/melani/cs6/rom.html
ROMANTICISMWhereas Neoclassicism’s rationality reinforced Enlightenment thought, particularly Voltaire’s views, Rousseau’s ideas contributed to the rise of Romanticism. His exclamation “Man is born free, but is everywhere in chains!”—the opening line of his Social Contract (1762)—summarizes a fundamental Romantic premise. Romanticism emerged from a desire for freedom—not only political freedom but also freedom of thought, of feeling, of action, of worship, of speech, and of taste. Romantics asserted that freedom was the right and property of all. They believed the path to freedom was through imagination rather than reason and functioned through feeling rather than thinking. The transition from Neoclassicism to Romanticism represented a shift in emphasis from reason to feeling, from calculation to intuition, and from objective thinking to subjective emotion. Among Romanticism’s manifestations were the interests in the medieval period and in the sublime. For people living in the 18th century, the Middle Ages were the “dark ages,” a time of barbarism, superstition, dark mystery, and miracle. The Romantic imagination stretched its perception of the Middle Ages into all the worlds of fantasy open to it, including the ghoulish, the infernal, the terrible, the nightmarish, the grotesque, the sadistic, and all the imagery that emerges from the chamber of horrors when reason sleeps. Related to the imaginative sensibility was the period’s notion of the sublime: feelings of awe mixed with terror. Philosopher Edmund Burke observed that pain or fear evoked the most intense human emotions and that these emotions could also be thrilling. Thus, raging rivers and great storms at sea could be sublime to their viewers. A terrifying beauty, for example. Accompanying this taste for the sublime was the taste for the fantastic, the occult, and the macabre—for the adventures of the soul voyaging into the dangerous reaches of consciousness.
Visual Artists Caspar David FriedrichWilliam Turner John ConstableThéodore GéricaultEugène DelacroixFrancisco Goya
Writers & Literature:William WordsworthSamuel Taylor ColeridgeJohn KeatsPercy Bysshe ShelleyMary ShelleyWilliam BlakeGeorge ByronJohann Wolfgang von Goethe Friedrich Schiller
Romanticism
MusiciansBeethoven
BerliozChopin
Romanticism
Principles & key concepts:•Nature•imagination•emotion •individualism & the self (alone)•the sublime•drama, current events
Main geographic
areas:England
GermanyFrance Spain
http://youtu.be/WMlqSZvyOoA Overview by OTIS
http://youtu.be/XympPG5iD-Y Raft of the Medusahttp://youtu.be/XkcHktjqI1s Monk by the Seahttp://youtu.be/FKIHHeBe674 The Hay Wain
Works discussed: John Constable, The Hay Wain, 1821, oil on canvas, 130 x 185 cm, National Gallery of Art, London Caspar David Friedrich, Monk by the Sea, c. 1809, oil on canvas, 110 x 172 cm, Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen, Berlin Théodore Géricault, Raft of the Medusa, oil on canvas, 491 x 716 cm, 1818-19, Musée du Louvre, Paris
IN-CLASS ACTIVITYOn a separate piece of paper, write your name, class and the date.Listen to the discussions about the three Romantic works of art. Make notes. Choose two of the three paintings. Identify one thing they have in common and one difference.Choose one painting and write 3 adjectives to describe it.
Théodore Géricault, Raft of the Medusa, oil on canvas, 491 x 716 cm, 1818-19, Musée du Louvre, Paris
John Constable, The Hay Wain, 1821, oil on canvas, 130 x 185 cm, National Gallery of Art, London
Caspar David Friedrich, Monk by the Sea, c. 1809, oil on canvas, 110 x 172 cm, Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen, Berlin
EXTRA & OPTIONAL:Overview and timeline http://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/art-history/art-history-1800-1848-industrial-revolution-i
List of Romantic artistshttp://www.wga.hu/index1.html
‘Ozymandias’ by Romantic poet, Percy Bysshe Shelley http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1bbJT7bZVA&feature=related
Chopin, ‘Nocturnes’http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V60USaluxGA
OTIS College overviewhttp://youtu.be/WMlqSZvyOoA