French Neoclassicism
History painting was the most elevated form of painting due to the important themes treated by the artists. The content was the most difficult to paint, for complex compositions with multiple human figures were required to display the artist’s knowledge of artistic techniques and of history itself. Such knowledge could be gained only at art school where all were taught in an official style, which, by the end of the Eighteenth Century, was Neoclassicism. History painters were more involved with the ancient and the classical was given immediacy and proximity with the discoveries of Pompeii and Herculaneum beginning with the mid-18th century. The unearthing (and looting) of a slice of ancient life, preserved in its original state had a revolutionary impact upon the visual arts, from drawing to painting to interior design to architecture. The clean hard edges of the antique drawing style stood in strong clear contrast to the soft edges of the waning Rococo style. The Antique Style was coded as simplicity and virtue while the Rococo style was coded as corrupt and decadent. Joseph Marie Vien took up the newly chic “classical” style and softened its hard edges with Rococo pastel colors and eroticism, easing the French audience into a transitional acceptance of the new style.
Dating from 1760 to 1800, the Neoclassical period begins with an air of expectancy, as though an era is awaiting a Messiah. Diderot yearned for the artist who could correct the excesses of the Baroque and the decadence of the Rococo, but he did not live to enjoy the work of the artist, who would inflict these old styles with the coup de grace, Jacques-Louis David. Neoclassicism is more than a simply shift in artistic style or in audience taste. Neoclassicism is first a period of response to art of antiquity seen in the art of Joseph Marie Vien and Angelica Kauffmann. Introducing Neoclassicism to the French in the Salon of 1763, Vien presented a reformed version of the Rococo, meaning that his work is linear, inspired by Flaxmann, but that his content is erotic, inspired by Fragonard. Kauffmann created genre scenes out of the classical era, domesticating and gendering Roman virtue, celebrating the ethics of women. From its second stage as a spare and Spartan style of rigor, Neoclassicism’s third state was activated dynamic one, in the service of Napoléon, until it dwindled down to a final stage of a sugary, sentimental, pompous, and empty academic style, demanded by the powers of the Academy of their students. Neoclassicism, exhausted as a means of communicating powerful ideas, became the academic status quo enforcing the established powers against which avant-garde artists will fight.
At its height, Neoclassicism was the dominant art style, restrained, cool and formal, marked by moralistic themes and perfect for the new forms of government following the fall of the French monarchy. Inspired by classical antiquity, artists painted with archaeological exactitude, based upon historical research and actual trips to Italy. The Neoclassical style was one of intellect, an art of perfecting nature and of presenting idealized human forms and exemplary human behavior. As such, Neoclassicism can be thought of as the application of a theory of aesthetics, as an attempt to re-write social existence, and as a text suggesting a new world of improved human behavior. Initially, Neoclassicism reflected the interests of the upper class, its passion for collecting the rare and precious antiquities and its need to present an ennobled self-image to a world, increasingly disenchanted with the self-indulgent ways of the aristocracy. The market orientation of Neoclassicism is most obvious in the early stages of the style with the frozen eroticism of Vien, but this fascination with the eroticized female would be ended by the second stage of Neoclassicism, and heroic men would take the center stage as active and noble subjects. Monumentality and sober and serious colors, strong shadows and theatrical settings filled with brave men engaged in virtuous enterprises became the preferred style at the end of the Eighteenth Century. David’s conversion to Neoclassicism in Rome, as seen in The Oath of the Horatti, 1785, resulted in a style that could serve the needs of his King as well as the needs of the Revolution that followed. Neoclassicism’s ancient roots rendered it universal and suitable for a multiplicity of causes and purposes.
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