NEOCLASSICISM

NEOCLASSICISM. One of the last truly international European aesthetic movements, neoclassicism left virtually no aspect of visual culture untouched. Despite its practical and theoretical connections to the classical tradition of Western art, neoclassicism was perceived by eighteenth-century critics as a revolutionary rejection of the decadence of the baroque that had held sway since the early seventeenth century. In addition to its formal stylistic characteristics, which include a propensity toward the emulation of ancient Greco-Roman art and an emphasis on dignity, restraint, and grandeur of scale, neoclassical art was often endowed with an ideological imperative. Seeking to reform society from above, many neoclassicists enlisted ancient virtue, morality, and ethics as antidotes to what they considered to be the frivolity, licentiousness, and sybaritic luxury of eighteenth-century elites. This reforming spirit was especially notable in France, where progressive artists embraced classical subjects that taught lessons in morality. The most important example in painting is Jacques-Louis David's Oath of the Horatii (1784). Visualizing La Font de Saint-Yenne's 1749 dictum, neoclassicism helped to redefined art's role in society as an agency that "made virtue attractive and vice odious."

As an artistic phenomenon, neoclassicism's impact may be seen in an astonishing variety of objects, from teaspoons and wallpaper to ecclesiastical architecture and equestrian monuments. Its earliest stirrings may be traced to the 1740s. Neoclassicism was given considerable impetus by the keen interest in archaeological excavation spurred by the discovery of the ruins of Herculaneum and Pompeii; regular excavations at Herculaneum began in 1738 and at Pompeii in 1748. Major excavations on the Palatine Hill in Rome, at Ostia and at Hadrian's Villa at Tivoli captured the imagination of Europe. Ancient sites in Spain, France, England, and elsewhere also received increased scrutiny. Such excavations created a mania for antique artifacts that led to numerous publications of the often spectacular finds. These books usually had engraved illustrations that did much to inspire artists, who quickly created both public and domestic spaces decorated by classically inspired art. Robert Adam's country house interiors, such as the great vestibule at Syon House, are important examples of neoclassicism's impact on the decorative arts and architecture inspired by neoclassical motifs. Josiah Wedgwood's ceramic works, fired at his factory in the English Midlands, reveal the ubiquity of the neoclassical aesthetic in both decorative and utilitarian objects.

Neoclassicism's epicenter was unquestionably Rome. As the artistic entrepôt of Europe and primary museum of the Western tradition, the city's privileged position as an international capital built on the decaying fabric of antiquity's greatest urban center gave Rome a unique luster. Enlightened papal policies led to the creation of Europe's first public museums, the Capitoline and the Pio-Clementino, which prominently featured canonical antiquities such as the Apollo Belvedere, the Capitoline Venus, and the Laocoön. These ancient marble sculptures were considered ideal exemplars of beauty and truth and inspired emulation by such artists as Antonio Canova, John Flaxman, and Bertel Thorvaldsen, among others. Indeed, Canova's Theseus and the Dead Minotaur of 1781–1783 is unimaginable without considering the artist's assiduous study of Greco-Roman sculptures preserved in Rome's museums and aristocratic collections.

The central aesthetic debates of neoclassicism also centered on Rome. Johann Joachim Winckelmann, a Prussian scholar and aesthete who served as librarian to Cardinal Alessandro Albani, gave a rationalist underpinning to developing neoclassicism with the 1764 publication of Geschichte der Kunst des Alterthums (History of ancient art). Quickly translated into most European languages, Winckelmann's book had an unprecedented impact on ideas about art and its relationship to society. It also posed questions about the fundamental differences between ancient Greek and Roman art, resolved in favor of the former. Winckelmann viewed the development of antique art as cyclical, from perfection in classical Athens to the bombastic decadence of the Roman Empire. His view was supported by Cardinal Albani's favorite artist Anton Raphael Mengs, who painted Parnassus in 1761 to adorn the ceiling of the grand salon of Albani's chic new villa on the Via Salaria, completed in 1760 by the architect Carlo Marchionni. This fresco is the first fully developed essay in neoclassical painting. The Villa Albani's collection of ancient sculpture was the finest private collection in existence, and the villa became a major attraction for visitors who helped to spread neoclassical ideas.

Albani, Mengs, and Winckelmann as champions of the Greeks did not go unchallenged. The leading exponent of the superiority of Roman art was the Venetian architect and engraver Giambattista Piranesi. Through myriad publications, above all Della magnificenza ed architettura de' Romani (On the magnificence and architecture of the Romans) of 1761, Piranesi consistently championed the grandeur of scale and fantasy of invention of ancient Roman artists and architects, whom he believed had perfected the simplicity and nobility of form achieved by the Greeks. The Greeks-versus-Romans polemic was one of the major intellectual debates of mid-eighteenth-century Europe. Piranesi's publications also had a profound impact on foreigners because of their wide distribution. Visitors were often disappointed because the scale of both ancient ruins and modern buildings was much smaller than Piranesi's prints had led them to imagine.

The grand tour, that elite practice of transalpine travelers venturing to Italy to study the remains of antiquity and the canonical works of both ancient and modern art, was also a crucial factor in the development and dissemination of neoclassicism. Rich tourists created a thriving market for antiquities and created an industry based on the production of pastiched statues and outright fakes of everything from paintings to cameos. A casual visit to almost any British country house will reveal the extent of the collecting mania for all things ancient. The tour promoted the notion of an upper-class, cosmopolitan culture based on the primacy of the classical tradition and helped to create a republic of letters that gave Europe an unprecedented degree of intellectual and aesthetic unity.

While obviously retrospective in nature, by the last years of the century neoclassicism had also attained a utopian thrust that was exploited in the interest of political, social, economic, and spiritual reform. The antique panacea was offered to an ailing Europe for such perceived ills as obscurantism, religious fanaticism, superstition, and social inequality. It was the rationalist basis of neoclassicism that so appealed to progressive Enlightenment thought and that led proponents of the French Revolution to embrace it for regimist purposes. Later, Napoleon co-opted the Roman Empire as both a precedent for and a justification of his own. The Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel (1806–1807) in Paris, executed by Charles Percier to celebrate French victories at Austerlitz and Jena, was based on the precedent of Rome's Arch of Constantine. The fact that both Jacobins and Bonapartists could claim the same cultural and political inheritance is vivid testimony to neoclassicism's pervasiveness and flexibility.

By 1830 neoclassicism had evolved from a progressive style extolling ancient virtue and aesthetic reform while opposing luxury and decorative self-indulgence to become the chief expression of modern empire and military dictatorship. Increasingly identified with an academic pedagogy that many younger Romantic artists considered stifling and outdated, neoclassicism also was associated with conservatism and aristocratic privilege, principles it had challenged and partly overcome in its early phases. Neoclassicism's afterlife has included its adoption by both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. It continues to be a rich source of forms and motifs for postmodern artists, architects, and designers.

See also Canova, Antonio ; Classicism ; David, Jacques-Louis ; Mengs, Anton Raphael ; Piranesi, Giovanni Battista ; Renaissance ; Republic of Letters ; Winckelmann, Johann Joachim .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Honour, Hugh. Neo-classicism. Rev. ed. Harmondsworth, U.K., 1991.

Irwin, David. Neoclassicism. London, 1997.

Praz, Mario. On Neoclassicism. Translated by Angus Davidson. Evanston, Ill., 1969.

Christopher M. S. Johns

Neo-Classicism. Dominant styles in European and American art and architecture in the late C18 and early C19, essentially a return to the Classicism of Antiquity as the Italian Renaissance began to be perceived as offering architectural paradigms that were untrue to the Antique. Taste was also turning away from Baroque and Rococo, and moving towards a greater appreciation of the importance of archaeology and scholarship to arrive at an architecture that was more true to the spirit of Antiquity. Bodies such as the Society of Dilettanti of London began to sponsor scholarly and accurate publications dealing with architecture and antiquities, of which The Antiquities of Athens (from 1762) was one of the most important, and a major catalyst of that branch of Neo-Classicism we call the Greek Revival. Comprehensive excavations led to a huge number of publications dealing not only with Rome and Athens, but with the important Roman sites at Herculaneum and Pompeii, leading to the so-called Etruscan style, and contributing in no small measure to the Adam and Empire styles. Appreciation of the architecture of ancient and modern Rome was enhanced by Piranesi's engraved views published in Antichità Romane (1748), Della Magnificenza ed Architettura de'Romani (1761), and other works, and also promoted a taste for the Sublime because Piranesi made his subjects more impressive than they really were by greatly exaggerating their size. The primitive and the severe began to be explored, especially the baseless Doric Order of Ancient Greek architecture, which looked strange to eyes accustomed to the refinements of Palladianism. Promoted by Winckelmann, Greek art began to be taken seriously, first in studies of the temples at Paestum and Sicily, and then in Greece itself under the aegis of the Dilettanti by Stuart, Revett, and others, leading to the Doric Revival and the use of bold primitive forms in architectural composition. Theorists such as Cordemoy, Laugier, and Lodoli argued for a return to simplicity, rational design free from clutter and unnecessary ornament, and the use of the Orders for structural rather than decorative reasons. Furthermore, geometry was to be used for expressive purposes, enabling volumes, parts of buildings, and elements to be clearly seen and understood. Charles-Nicolas Cochin (1715–90) and and Jérome-Charles Bellicard (1726–86) brought out their Observations sur les antiquités de la ville d'Herculaneum (1753, 1754, 1756, 1757, 1758) which was influential in promoting Neo-Classical taste, while writers such as Le Roy and Peyre moved French architecture towards Ancient Greece for its inspiration and away from Rome. Robert Adam and Clérisseau published Ruins of the Palace of the Emperor Diocletian at Spalatro (1768), drawing further attention to late-Roman Antique remains. While certain aspects of Neo-Classicism involved scholarly reproductions of Antique buildings and elements, as in the Greek Revival works by Stuart, Smirke, and Wilkins, the movement as a whole was not confined to copying (though accurate quotation was an integral part of it), but favoured clarity, stereometrical purity of form, and a lack of superfluous ornament or fussiness to evoke the Antique. This tendency can best be seen in the works of architects such as Boullée, Durand, Ehrensvärd, Gilly, Latrobe, Ledoux, Millar, Monck, and Soane. The publication of accurate surveys of Ancient Egyptian buildings from 1802 by Denon and the Commission des Monuments d'Égypte from 1809 brought further elements into the vocabulary of architects seeking stark, tough, forms (see egyptian revival). Neo-Classicism reached peaks of refinement in the hands of Empire designers such as Percier and Fontaine, and in architecture in the hands of von Klenze and Schinkel: it also enjoyed a C20 revival as a reaction to Neo-Baroque and Art Nouveau styles, often in very stripped, simplified form, notably in Scandinavia, Germany, and the USA (e.g. work by Asplund, Behrens, Burnham, Tony Garnier, Kampmann, Lewerentz, Loos, McKim, Mead, & White, Muzio, Perret, Petersen, Piacentini, Plečnik, Speer, Tessenow, and many others).

Bibliography

CoE (1972);
Crook (1972a);
J. Curl (2001, 2002a, 2005);
Honour (1977);
Jervis (1984);
Lampugnani (ed.) (1988);
Lewis & and Darley (1986);
Pariset (1974);
Pevsner (1968);
Summerson (1993);
Jane Turner (1996);
Traulos (1967);
Watkin & and Mellinghoff (1987)

Neoclassicism. The dominant movement in European art and architecture in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, characterized by a desire to re-create the spirit and forms of the art of ancient Greece and Rome. A new and more scientific interest in classical antiquity, greatly stimulated by the discoveries at Pompeii (where excavations began in 1748) and Herculaneum, was one of the features of the movement, and it is also seen as a reaction against the light-hearted and frivolous Rococo style. The order, clarity, and reason of Greek and Roman art appealed greatly in the Age of Enlightenment, and the Neoclassical style could have moral as well as aesthetic implications, particularly in France, where it is associated with the Revolution and a desire to restore ancient Roman values into civil life. It is, indeed, in the paintings of David, with their antique grandeur and simplicity of form, and their heroic severity of tone, that Neoclassicism finds its purest expression, but the style was born and had its focal point in Rome. Mengs and Winckelmann were in the vanguard of the movement there, and other leading figures from all over Europe—including Canova, Flaxman, Gavin Hamilton, and Thorvaldsen—spent the main or important parts of their careers in the city. Many American artists worked there too—notably the sculptor Horatio Greenough, who was a pupil of Thorvaldsen—and took the Neoclassical style back to their country.

Because Neoclassicism placed respect for approved models above personal expression it was a style that particularly lent itself to this kind of international currency. The 18th century saw a great growth in the publication of lavishly illustrated volumes on classical art, architecture, and antiquities, and this helped to spread the ideals of the movement. There was, however, considerable stylistic variation within Neoclassicism; Angelica Kauffmann, for example, painted in a delicate and pretty manner that is far removed from David's severity. Moreover, there is no firm dividing line between Neoclassicism and Romanticism, even though in some ways they appear to be at opposite spiritual poles. In the revival of interest in antique art, archaeological zeal could easily give way to a nostalgic yearning for a lost golden age, and the term ‘Romantic Classicism’ is sometimes used to characterize an aspect of Neoclassicism in which an interest in antiquity is tinged with Romantic feeling. In fact the antipathy between Classics and Romantics (exemplified by Ingres and Delacroix, for example) was unknown before the 19th century, and it was only in the mid-19th century, at a time when the antique revival style was out of fashion, that the word ‘Neoclassicism’ was coined—originally a pejorative term with suggestions of lifelessness and impersonality. These negative connotations have clung tenaciously to the term, and the ardent aspirations of the founders of Neoclassicism have been obscured by the fact that the more decorative aspects of the movement—Wedgwood pottery, for example—have become more closely associated with the word in the public consciousness than have the great masterpieces of David and Canova.

Neoclassicism is related to but can be distinguished from Greek Taste, which was a fairly superficial fashion for Greek-inspired decoration, and from the Greek Revival, which in architecture was a movement expressing a new interest in the simplicity and gravity of ancient Greek buildings. It began seriously in the 1790s and culminated in the 1820s and 1830s. Greek architecture became widely known in the West only around 1750–60 and in the early days of Neoclassicism it was regarded as primitive and few architects cared to imitate it.

In the context of modern art, the term Neoclassicism has been applied to a revival of the spirit of classicism among avant-garde artists in the second and third decades of the 20th century, marking a return to restraint after a period of unprecedented experimentation. Other terms for this phenomenon include ‘the New Classicism’, ‘the classical revival’, ‘the return to order’, and ‘the call to order’ (this last being the title of a book by Jean Cocteau, published in 1926—Le Rappel à l'ordre).

Neoclassicism. The dominant movement in European art and architecture in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, characterized by a desire to recreate the spirit and forms of the art of ancient Greece and Rome. A new and more scientific interest in classical antiquity, greatly stimulated by the discoveries at Pompeii (where excavations began in 1748) and Herculaneum, was one of the features of the movement, and it is also seen as a reaction against the light-hearted and frivolous Rococo style. The order, clarity, and reason of Greek and Roman art appealed greatly in the Age of Englightenment, and the Neoclassical style could have moral as well as aesthetic implications, particularly in France, where it is associated with the Revolution and a desire to restore ancient Roman values into civil life. It is, indeed, in the paintings of J.-L. David, with their antique grandeur and simplicity of form, and their heroic severity of tone, that Neoclassicism finds its purest expression, but the style was born and had its focal point in Rome. Mengs and Winckelmann were in the vanguard of the movement there, and other leading figures from all over Europe—Canova, Flaxman, Gavin Hamilton, Thorvaldsen—spent the main or important parts of their careers in the city. Many American artists worked there too—notably the sculptor Horatio Greenough, who was a pupil of Thorvaldsen—and took the Neoclassical style back to their country. Because Neoclassicism placed respect for approved models above personal expression it was a style that particularly lent itself to this kind of international currency. The 18th century saw a great growth in the publication of lavishly illustrated volumes on classical art, architecture, and antiquities, and this helped to spread the ideals of the movement. There was, however, considerable stylistic variation within Neoclassicism; Angelica Kauffmann, for example, painted in a delicate and pretty manner that is far removed from David's severity. Moreover, there is no firm dividing line between Neoclassicism and Romanticism, even though in some ways they appear to be at opposite spiritual poles. In the revival of interest in antique art, archaeological zeal could easily give way to a nostalgic yearning for a lost Golden Age, and the term ‘Romantic Classicism’ is sometimes used to characterize an aspect of Neoclassicism in which an interest in antiquity is tinged with Romantic feeling. In fact the antipathy between Classics and Romantics (exemplified by Ingres and Delacroix, for example) was unknown before the 19th century, and it was only in the mid-19th century, at a time when the antique revival style was out of fashion, that the word ‘Neoclassicism’ was coined—originally a pejorative term with suggestions of lifelessness and impersonality. These negative connotations have clung tenaciously to the term, and the ardent aspirations of the founders of Neoclassicism have been obscured by the fact that the more decorative aspects of the movement—Wedgwood pottery, for example—have become more closely associated with the word in the public consciousness than have the great masterpieces of David and Canova.

Neoclassicism is related to but can be distinguished from Greek Taste, which was a fairly superficial fashion for Greek-inspired decoration, and from the Greek Revival, which in architecture was a movement expressing a new interest in the simplicity and gravity of ancient Greek buildings. It began seriously in the 1790s and culminated in the 1820s and 1830s. Greek architecture became widely known in the West only around 1750–60 and in the early days of Neoclassicism it was regarded as primitive and few architects cared to imitate it.

In the context of modern art, the term Neoclassicism has been applied to a revival of the spirit of classicism among avant-garde artists in the second and third decades of the 20th century, marking a return to restraint after a period of unprecedented experimentation. Other terms for this phenomenon include ‘the New Classicism’, ‘the classical revival’, ‘the return to order’, and ‘the call to order’ (this last being the title of a book by Jean Cocteau, published in 1926—Le Rappel à l'ordre).

neo-classicism, in literature, the habit of imitating the great authors of antiquity as a matter of aesthetic principle. Medieval writers had often used classical works for models, but Petrarch in the 14th cent. was the first to do so because he considered it the only way to produce great literature. The epic, eclogue, elegy, ode, satire, tragedy, comedy, and epigram of ancient times all found imitators, first in Latin, then in the vernaculars. At the beginning of the 16th cent. the recovery of the previously neglected Poetics of Aristotle provoked an attempt to establish rules for the use of the ancient genres. The Poetics itself was repeatedly edited, translated, and supplied with commentaries, notably by Castelvetro (1570), and a number of treatises on poetry appeared, culminating in J. C. Scaliger's controversial Poëtice (1561). These theoreticians imprisoned imitation within a rigid framework of rules. The most famous of their inventions was the observance of the dramatic unities of time, place, and action, which won great support in France in the 1620s where a new generation was eager to attract a more educated public. A noisy battle over Corneille's popular tragi-comedy Le Cid (1637), which was blamed for breaking the rules, ended in an acceptance of the unities, and during the next 30 years a succession of critics, the best-known of whom was Boileau, extended the scope of their prescriptions from drama to all other major genres.

Up to the last quarter of the 17th cent. neoclassicism had little influence in England and, except for Jonson, no important writer paid strict attention to the rules. But at that point playwrights responded to the urgings of Rymer and began to take neo-classical theories more seriously. Dryden produced All for Love (1677) and Addison his Cato (1713), which has been called the only correct neo-classical tragedy in English; but the fashion was not to last.

The usual excuse for the rules was that they helped writers to be true to nature. Pope wrote: ‘Those rules of old discover'd not devis'd, | Are Nature still, but Nature methodiz'd’, and implicit in his view was the assumption that ‘nature’ consisted in what was generally true. Cervantes in the early 17th cent. had argued for the representation of true facts of an exceptional nature, and a hundred years later it had become clear to everybody that extraordinary phenomena furnished literary material of considerable value. The scope of what could be regarded as natural was steadily growing, and simultaneously the difficulty Homer's readers experienced in appreciating his poems made them aware of the fact that behaviour usual in one age could prove unacceptable in another. What undermined neo-classicism most decisively in the 18th cent. was the changing view of the goal of literary creation provoked by Boileau's translation (1674) of the pseudo-Longinian treatise of the sublime. A cult of sublimity replaced the wish to produce a just representation of general reality, and the way to Romanticism lay open.

Neo-classicism. Term applied to 20th-cent. mus. trend which developed in the 1920s, when several composers wrote works in 17th- and 18th-cent. forms and styles as a reaction against the excessive orchestration of the late 19th-cent. romantics. Prokofiev's Classical Symphony (1916–17) and R. Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos (1912) can be claimed as neo-classical, but the movt. began in earnest with Stravinsky (Capriccio for pf. and wind, pf. conc., Pulcinella, vn. conc., Oedipus Rex, etc.) and Hindemith. In Eng. Vaughan Williams's vn. conc. (orig. Concerto Accademico) of 1925 was neo-classical in style, though, because for most composers the model was Bach, neo-baroque might be a more accurate description. ( Prokofiev's Classical Symphony, being a pastiche of Haydn, is truly named.)

neo-classicism Movement in late 18th- and early 19th-century European art and architecture. Neo-classicism grew out of the Age of Enlightenment, whose exponents admired the order and clarity of ancient Greek and Roman art. The archaeological discoveries at Herculaneum and Pompeii, Italy, in the 1740s helped to stimulate interest in these ancient civilizations. Many of the movement's pioneers congregated in Rome, notably Johann Winckelmann, Canova, John Flaxman, Gavin Hamilton, and Bertel Thorvaldsen. The most powerful neo-classical painter was Jacques Louis David, whose work expressed great severity and grandeur. The concurrent Greek Revival involved, in architecture, imitating the simplicity of ancient Greek buildings.

neoclassicism the revival of a classical style or treatment in art, literature, architecture, or music. As an aesthetic and artistic style this originated in Rome in the mid 18th century, combining a reaction against the late baroque and rococo with a new interest in antiquity. In music, the term refers to a return by composers of the early 20th century to the forms and styles of the 17th and 18th centuries, as a reaction against 19th-century Romanticism.

neoclassicism see classicism .