Lest we find ourselves completely
out of the historical order of the 19th century, it is vital that I
point out here and now that history is rarely an exact, mathematical
study. Periods of history blend
together. This is easily enough
understood, I trust. It isn't like the
world was still living in agrarianism in 1799, and as soon as the calendar
turned to 1800, then the Industrial Age began—not at all. Art is the same way; our periods will
increasingly begin to blend and mesh together.
Not to worry: just keep in mind that other things are continually
happening during a single period of art.
I think the French Revolution is one of the greatest examples of an
absolute and immediate turn-around in the art world. After 1789, Rococo art met its end almost
immediately, given the violent extremity of the situation in France—almost. The style still was continued on here and
there. American artist Edward Hicks's
painting Peaceable Kingdom, painted in 1826, for example, still demonstrates
the aristocratic ideology of Rococo-style art.
This Post-Revolutionary painting is
also an example of propaganda in that it showcases European supremacy. On the left, Europeans make peace with the
Native Americans; and on the right, little children, pure and clothed in white,
make peace with otherwise savage animals.
The two sides are correlative: the Europeans are pictured as innocent
babies learning to tame the allegedly uncivilized and savage Native American
beasts. This is a very white supremacist
message, and one which honors the upper-class aristocracy over the common man
(or Indian)—a Rococo-inspired theme. I
always thought it was kind of a weird painting.
Look at the wildness in the animals' eyes, showing how dangerous and
undomesticated they truly are; but the babies are calmly sitting nearby and
even petting the beasts.
Paintings like this continue to be
produced, but noticeably less after the French Revolution and, eventually, not
at all. So, we see a crossing-over with
Rococo into Neoclassical art. The timeline
is not always precisely in sequence. In
fact, one of the chief works credited to the Neoclassical Period of art was
painted by David before the Revolution: his Oath of the Horatii. We furthermore see a combination of
Neoclassical art with Romantic art. We
have arrived in our study of art history at the Romantic Period now, but that
does not mean that Neoclassical styles have altogether expired. In fact, Romanticism (capital R) took much of
its inspiration from Neoclassical theory, and these qualities can be seen in
many of the paintings we are about to look at.
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