ROCOCO

ROCOCO. A style of art characteristic of the eighteenth century, its focal point was France, where it was the dominant style during the first half of the century, although it enjoyed manifestations throughout Europe. Etymologically, "rococo" probably derived from a combination of the first two syllables of the French words rocaille (a form of rockwork found in architectural ornament and decorative arts) and coquillage (a shell motif that accompanied the rocaille ). Coined in the 1790s by students of the neoclassical French painter Jacques-Louis David (1748–1825), "rococo" began as a pejorative expression. In an ironic twist of history, however, the earliest instance of the term's recorded usage applied it to David, rather than to a rococo artist properly speaking (such as Antoine Watteau, 1684–1721, or François Boucher, 1703–1770). A group of David's students (he called them his "Greeks"), finding his Intervention of the Sabine Women (1799) not Greek enough, judged his masterpiece "[Charles André] Van Loo, [Madame de] Pompadour, rococo." Originally then, the term was studio slang that involved critical judgments about aesthetic taste in general and about painting in particular, rather than a designation for stylistic tendencies in decorative arts, interiors, or architectural ornament (what the eighteenth century called le rocaille or le genre pittoresque, which rococo now denotes in its strictest usage). This account of the word's origin (which comes from David's student, Etienne Delécluze) also suggests that from the start "rococo" was a critical term bound up conceptually with issues of gender and class—hence the synonymity between rococo and Madame de Pompadour (1721–1764), the longtime favorite of Louis XV (ruled 1715–1774).

Until the end of the nineteenth century "rococo" was not widely used as an art historical term, except in Germany. For the French it remained a general label for the taste that was fashionable during the reign of Louis XV. As early as the 1840s the French also commonly applied it to anything that was old-fashioned, as did the English. By then Jacob Burckhardt had begun to use it as a generic art historical term for the decadent phases of all period styles (he described a "rococo" in Romanesque, Gothic, and Hellenistic art). Soon thereafter other German art historians began to use rococo as a formal classification of the general period and style of Louis XV, and it was they who inaugurated the first critical analyses of the style. Though recognizing rococo as a mode of decoration that originated in France, these scholars were concerned largely with theorizing the style in relation to baroque architecture in Germany and Italy. The Residenz in Würzburg, designed by Balthasar Neumann (1687–1753), is a magnificent example of German rococo architecture.

Since Fiske Kimball's foundational book, The Creation of the Rococo (1943), the term has been used most commonly to name an indigenously French style of decoration, marked by asymmetry and motifs both fanciful and naturalistic, that was distinct and separate from the baroque and was developed by a small number of designers, ornamentalists, and architects during the first half of the century (these included Gilles-Marie Oppenord, Nicolas Pineau, Juste-Aurèle Meissonier, and Jacques de Lajoüe). In the meantime, the word has continued to be used variously as a designation for a broad historical period spanning the decades from the Regency to the reign of Louis XVI (ruled 1774–1792), known as the "Rococo Age," or a pan-European style "capable of suffusing all spheres of art." Some scholars have argued that it was the first "modern" style; others have denied that it qualifies as a style at all. Lately it has become possible to speak of rococo as a cultural mode of being, thought, and representation rather than exclusively as a formal idiom.

See also Baroque ; Boucher, François ; David, Jacques-Louis ; France, Art in ; Louis XV (France) ; Pompadour, Jeanne-Antoinette Poisson .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Delécluze, E. J. Louis David, son école, et son temps: Souvenirs. Paris, 1983.

John, Richard. "Rococo." In The Grove Dictionary of Art Online, edited by L. Macy. Available at http://www.groveart.com.

Kimball, Fiske. The Creation of the Rococo. Philadelphia, 1943.

Minguet, J. Philippe. Esthétique du Rococo. Paris, 1979.

Park, William. The Idea of Rococo. Newark, Del., and Cranbury, N.J.: 1992.

Roland Michel, Marianne. Lajoüe et l'art rocaille. Neuillysur-Seine, France, 1984.

Schönberger, Arno, and Halldor Soehner. The Age of Rococo. Translated by Daphne Woodward. London, 1960.

Sedlmayr, Hans, and Hermann Bauer. "Rococo." In The Encyclopedia of World Art. New York, 1966.

Semper, Gottfried. Der Stil in den technischen und tektonischen Künsten, oder, praktische Aesthetik: Ein Handbuch für Techniker, Künstler, und Kunstfreunde. 2 vols. 2nd rev. ed. Munich, 1878–1879.

Melissa Hyde

Rococo. Style of art and architecture, characterized by lightness, grace, playfulness, and intimacy, that emerged in France c.1700 and spread throughout Europe in the 18th century. The word is said to have been coined in 1796–7 by one of J.-L. David's students, wittily combining rocaille and barocco (Baroque), to refer disparagingly to the taste fashionable in the mid-18th century. Thus, like so many stylistic labels, it began life as a term of abuse, and it long retained its original connotations, implying an art that was, in the words of one of the definitions given to it in the Oxford English Dictionary, ‘excessively or tastelessly florid or ornate’. However, the word is now used without any pejorative connotations.

The Rococo was both a development from and a reaction against the weightier Baroque style, and initially it was expressed mainly in interior decoration. It shared with the Baroque a love of complexity of form, but instead of a concern for solidity and mass, there was a delicate play on the surface, with sombre colours and heavy gilding giving way to lighter tones and delicate ornament, and much use of asymmetrical curves and pretty decorative motifs. The style was in general less suited to exteriors, but something of the Rococo spirit—of its refinement and charm—can be seen even in such a regular and relatively unadorned building as Ange-Jacques Gabriel's Petit Trianon (1763–9) at Versailles. In painting, the first great master of the Rococo style was Watteau, and the painters who most completely represent the light-hearted (often gently erotic) spirit of the mature Rococo style are Boucher and Fragonard. Falconet is perhaps the best representative of the style in French sculpture, but generally the Rococo spirit is seen more clearly in small porcelain figures than in large-scale statues (Falconet himself was director of the sculpture studios at the famous porcelain factory at Sèvres).

From Paris the Rococo was disseminated by French artists working abroad and by engraved publications of French designs (see Berain, for example). It spread to Germany, Austria, Russia, Spain, and northern Italy (Tiepolo, Longhi, Guardi). In England it had somewhat less of a vogue, although a substantial exhibition of English Rococo art was held at the Victoria and Albert Museum in 1984 and there are clear reflections of the style even in the work of so xenophobic an artist as Hogarth. Gainsborough's delicacy of characterization and sensitivity of touch (although completely personal) are also thoroughly in the Rococo spirit. In each country the style took on a national character and in addition many local variants may be distinguished. Outside France, it had its finest flowering in Germany and Austria, where it merged with a still vigorous Baroque tradition. In churches such as Vierzehnheiligen (1743–72) by Balthasar Neumann, the Baroque qualities of spatial variety and of architecture, sculpture, and painting working together are taken up in a breathtakingly light and exuberant manner. The Rococo flourished in central Europe until the end of the century (as in the work of Maulbertsch), but in France and elsewhere the tide of taste had begun to turn from frivolity towards the sternness of Neoclassicism by the 1760s.

Rococo. Style of art and architecture, characterized by lightness, grace, playfulness, and intimacy, that emerged in France c.1700 and spread throughout Europe in the 18th century. The Rococo was both a development from and a reaction against the weightier Baroque style, and initially it was expressed mainly in interior decoration. It shared with the Baroque a love of complexity of form, but instead of a concern for solidity and mass, there was a delicate play on the surface, with sombre colours and heavy gilding giving way to lighter tones and delicate ornament. The word is said to have been coined in the 1790s by a pupil of J.-L. David as a combination of barocco (Baroque) and rocaille; like many stylistic labels in the history of art, it was originally a term of abuse, meaning ‘tastelessly florid or ornate’, but it is now used without any pejorative connotations.

In painting, the first great master of the Rococo style was Watteau and the painters who most completely represent the light-hearted (often gently erotic) spirit of the mature Rococo style are Boucher and Fragonard. Falconet is perhaps the best representative of the style in French sculpture, but generally the Rococo spirit is seen more clearly in small porcelain figures than in large-scale statues (Falconet himself was director of the famous porcelain factory at Sèvres). In architecture the Rococo style was much more suitable for interiors, with asymmetrical curves and pretty decorative motifs prevailing, than for exteriors, but something of the Rococo spirit—of its refinement and charm—can be seen even in such a regular and relatively unadorned building as Ange-Jacques Gabriel's Petit Trianon (1763–9) at Versailles.

From Paris the Rococo was disseminated by French artists working abroad and by engraved publications of French designs. It spread to Germany, Austria, Russia, Spain, and northern Italy (Tiepolo, Pietro Longhi, Guardi). In England it had somewhat less of a vogue, although a substantial exhibition of English Rococo art was held at the Victoria and Albert Museum in 1984 and there are clear reflections of the style even in the work of so xenophobic an artist as Hogarth. Gainsborough's delicacy of characterization and sensitivity of touch (although completely personal) are also thoroughly in the Rococo spirit. In each country the style took on a national character and in addition many local variants may be distinguished. Outside France, it had its finest flowering in Germany and Austria, where it merged with a still vigorous Baroque tradition. In churches such as Vierzehnheiligen (1743–72) by Balthasar Neumann, the Baroque qualities of spatial variety and of architecture, sculpture, and painting working together are taken up in a breathtakingly light and exuberant manner. The Rococo flourished in central Europe until the end of the century (as in the work of Maulbertsch), but in France and elsewhere the tide of taste had begun to turn from frivolity towards the sternness of Neoclassicism by the 1760s.

Rococo. C18 decorative style (some (e.g. Pevsner) have denied it as a style at all, but others (e.g. Kimball, Sedlmayr, and Bauer) had no such doubts) originating in France, and coinciding with the Régence and Louis Quinze periods, that rapidly spread throughout Europe. It was elegant and frothy, deriving from Auricular, Rocaille, and Baroque themes, drawing on the marine and shell motifs found in grottoes, and incorporating ogee and C-scrolls, asymmetrically disposed around frames, cartouches, etc., like a mixture of coral, seaweed, and stylized foliage. Colours were light and pale, often incorporating gold and silver, while the exotic was never far away, for Rococo designs included aspects of Chinoiserie, Gothick, and even, in its late phase, Hindoo decorations. Rococo decorations included bandwork, diaper-patterns, espagnolettes, scallop-shells, and scroll-work, incorporated in schemes of decoration of unsurpassed grace and beauty, perhaps achieving their greatest heights in France and Southern Germany. In Southern Bavaria and Franconia Rococo reached its finest expression with the interiors of the Amalienburg, Schloss Nymphenburg, Munich, by Cuvilliés and Zimmermann, and the Pilgrimage Church of Vierzehnheiligen (Fourteen Saints), Franconia, the building of which was by Neumann, who had nothing at all to do with the marvellous Rococo decorations (stucco-work and statuary by Johann Michael Feichtmayr (1696–1772), much influenced by his associate, Johann Georg Üblhör (1703–63—who died after the contract was signed, but before the actual work on site commenced), frescoes by Giuseppe Appiani (c.1701–85/6), central altar-shrine with baldacchino (Gnadenaltar) designed by Johann Jakob Michael Küchel (1703–69—who took over the construction of the building itself from 1745) and made by Feichtmayr). Rococo enjoyed a revival in France during C19, while in America, Britain, and Germany aspects of Rococo re-emerged from the 1820s to the 1860s, and in the late 1880s and 1890s there was another revival which was transmogrified into a synthesis of design in Art Nouveau.

Bibliography

B l (1973);
Chilvers, Osborne, & Farr (eds.) (1988);
Hitchcock (1968a);
Kimball (1980);
Lewis & Darley (1986);
Loers (1976);
M&E (1999);
C. Powell (1959);
Jane Turner (1996);
Zürchner (1977)

rococo , style in architecture, especially in interiors and the decorative arts, which originated in France and was widely used in Europe in the 18th cent. The term may be derived from the French words rocaille and coquille (rock and shell), natural forms prominent in the Italian baroque decorations of interiors and gardens. The first expression of the rococo was the transitional régence style . In contrast with the heavy baroque plasticity and grandiloquence, the rococo was an art of exquisite refinement and linearity. Through their engravings, Juste Aurèle Meissonier and Nicholas Pineau helped spread the style throughout Europe. The Parisian tapestry weavers, cabinetmakers, and bronze workers followed the trend and arranged motifs such as arabesque elements, shells, scrolls, branches of leaves, flowers, and bamboo stems into ingenious and engaging compositions. The fashionable enthusiasm for Chinese art added to the style the whole bizarre vocabulary of chinoiserie motifs. In France, major exponents of the rococo were the painters Watteau, Boucher, and Fragonard and the architects Robert de Cotte, Gilles Marie Oppenord, and later Jacques Ange Gabriel. The rococo vogue spread to Germany and Austria, where François de Cuvilliès was the pioneer. Italian rococo, particularly that of Venice, was brilliantly decorative, exemplified in the paintings of Tiepolo. The furniture of Thomas Chippendale manifested its influence in England. During the 1660s and 1670s, the rococo competed with a more severely classical form of architecture, which triumphed with the accession of Louis XVI.

Bibliography: See F. Kimball, The Creation of the Rococo (1943); A. Schönberger and H. Soehner, The Rococo Age (tr. 1960); H. A. Millon, Baroque and Rococo Architecture (1961); G. Bazin, Baroque and Rococco (tr. 1964); H. Hitchcock, German Rococco (1970).

rococo (of furniture or architecture) of or characterized by an elaborately ornamental late baroque style of decoration prevalent in 18th-century Continental Europe, with asymmetrical patterns involving motifs and scrollwork; extravagantly or excessively ornate. Recorded from the mid 19th century, the word comes from French, as a humorous alteration of rocaille, an 18th-century artistic or architectural style of decoration characterized by elaborate ornamentation with pebbles and shells. The word (which is French) comes from roc ‘rock’.

rococo Playful, light style of art, architecture and decoration that developed in early 18th-century France. It soon spread to Germany, Austria, Italy, and Britain. Rococo brought swirls, scrolls, shells, and arabesques to interior decoration. It was also applied to furniture, porcelain, and silverware.

rococo †old-fashioned; characterized by conventional shell-and-scroll-work, as of the time of Louis XIV and XV of France. XIX. — F. rococo, fanciful alt. of rocaille pebble- or shell-work, f. roc ROCK2.

rococo. A development of baroque architecture and decoration, which originated in France and lasted from c.1715 to 1760.

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