French Neoclassicism: Sculpture, and Architecture
In contrast the painterly complexities of the Baroque style, Neoclassical painting was simplicity itself. Contours were not obscured but legible, based upon the elegant and restrained drawing style of the Greek vases. Composition was solid, classical and stable, based upon basic geometric units. Color, which Winckelmann disapproved of and discounted, was strong but restrained. Paint was applied flatly, without inflection. Composition was centered and orderly, presenting the figures in a theatrical manner, so that each character could be seen clearly. Poses were restrained in gesture yet illustrative, telling the story and furthering the narration. Carefully painted human forms were assembled upon a stage in long frieze compositions resembling sculptural reliefs, betraying their origins in classical sculpture and Greek vases. The aesthetics, that is the ethical and educative purpose of art, stemmed from the art of the Athenian Greeks, which was public and communal. Winckelmann’s lesson was that the nobility of Greek art was manifested in the idealizing style, which perfected the human form, indicating the society’s strivings for perfection. The moral impulse emanated from Republican Rome, imagined as a time of virtue before the excesses of imperialism, following the Age of Augustus. The message of Roman virtue was linked to the stoic “naturalism” of Rousseau who longed for an ideal “primitive” life uncorrupted by sophistication, civilization and urbanism, imagined in his book, Emile.
Neoclassical sculpture could not help but be based upon precedents of Greek and Roman sculptures. Baroque sculpture, as seen in the works of Bernini, was dynamic, exciting and active, but Neoclassical sculpture returned to the calm grandeur of Greek sculptures with calm poses that were upright, classical postures, free of unrestrained gestures, giving an overall feeling of stillness and poise to Neoclassical sculptures by Antonio Canova. Not knowing that the Greek sculpture he was viewing were Roman copies, Winckelmann had nothing but high praise for the graceful and restrained Apollo he viewed in the Belvedere of the Vatican. The marble copies of the Greek bronzes fundamentally altered the Greek originals, and Europeans had little opportunity to view original Greek marble sculptures, until 1806 when Thomas Bruce, Lord Elgin, brought sculptures from the Parthenon to England. Sold at a loss to the British government ten years later, the “Elgin Marbles” were shocking to Eighteenth Century audiences in their rough and ready realism. Contrary to assumptions of idealism, actual Athenian sculptures show a deep concern with a realism of details, from copper nipples on male nudes to inlaid eyes to the polychrome surfaces. The modern vision of classical sculpture and architecture as being pure white is inaccurate and anachronistic. Classical sculpture and architecture was very brightly colored and adorned with metal details, but the actual appearance of Classical art is not as important as how classicism was reinterpreted to meet the needs of the Enlightenment.
Classical architecture was practical and pragmatic and, prior to Mies van der Rohr, form followed function, and yet Neoclassical architects reimagined classicism as utopian. Once again, we see the phenomenon of plundering the past and appropriating it for the needs of the present. The Enlightenment with its emphasis on optimism and progress was essentially futuristic or forward looking. Neoclassical architects attempted to create architectural forms suitable for a new and improved idealized future. Neoclassical architecture was based upon simple geometric forms—circle, square and rectangle—universal forms, suitable for utopian dreams of new buildings for a new society. The extreme simplicity combined with the monumentality gave the visionary buildings an unexpected air of surreality, unhappily present in the mad visions of Nazi architecture.
Architects such as Claude-Nicolas Ledoux used laws of rigid and simple geometry as the visual language of reason. “The circle and the square are the alphabet authors use in the texture of the best works,” remarked Claude-Nicolas Ledoux. In the works of Etienne-Louis Boulée, the circle or square or rectangle was divided into equal parts around omnipotent center, giving his works a rather foreboding totalitarian atmosphere. Architecture in the Eighteenth Century was seen as being allied to power and repression. After the fall of the Bastille, on July 14, 1789, the prison was promptly demolished. Equally hated was the vast visionary project of the customs wall of the Farmers-General that encircled Paris. Ledoux would see his major architectural work, the gate and custom posts of the despised wall, of fall to the mob in July of 1789. Jean-Jacques Leque also created pure architectonic forms, treated them with economy and elegance, but, like his colleagues, he produced architectural visions that could never be realized. Most of the looming and gigantic buildings of these visionary architects were rendered but never built, and the architecture of the Enlightenment, like the architecture of the Russian Revolution, was doomed to be “paper architecture.” The concern of these architects with utility arose from nature and its perfect functionality and efficiency, and yet, the very purity and reductiveness of their designs resulted in a kind of hallucinogenic glimpse into an impossible future.
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