The Baroque Style

990 Words2 Pages

Derell Griffin
GLA 607
24 November 2015
Rococo
The Rococo was an 18th-century art movement that followed the Baroque movement. The Baroque is a period of artistic style that used exaggerated motion and clear, easily interpreted detail to produce drama, tension, exuberance, and grandeur in sculpture, painting, architecture, literature, dance, and music. The Roman Catholic Church was the reason the Baroque style was so popular and successful. The Baroque style was a response to the Protestant Reformation that the arts should communicate religious themes in direct and emotional involvement. This style was extremely popular by the aristocrats, the dramatic art and architecture was used to impress visitors and expressing extreme power and control. …show more content…

In one his essays he challenged the artists to try and solve the questions of our existence and the world. V.H. Minor, a scholar in art history synthesized De Montaigne’s request of artists stating, “There are no first principles by which we can be convinced of the existence of the world and of the values that we impose upon that social milieu.”. I believe De Montaigne’s expectations to leave it to the artists was a good decision on his behalf. Philosophers spent their lives trying to figure out ways to explain how the world works and what it means to be human amongst many other …show more content…

This painting is a perfect example of Rococo style. Girl with Pigs was painted with loose strokes and less detail work in the landscape objects but it doesn’t stop here. If you take a look at the subject of the painting you will notice that she is not looking at the painter. A first glance one would think this was another portrait painting but it goes beyond that. This instead is much more natural, the girl is not in a fixed pose that would fit with the normal artistic rules but instead is observing her pigs as they take a drink from their bowl. Taking a look at her clothes, you will see that they are old and tattered signifying she belongs to a working class family and not an elite. Through the study of the works of Gainsborough, we can not only get the sense of the Rococo style but see how they fit into the Enlightenment. The Rococo was about creating works that reflected the rational aspects and realist appeal of life which is what the Enlightenment sought out to do as well. The artists used loose lines to portray the shapes as they appear in motion, free from constraints which can be attributed to the Enlightenment that was based on the rejection of traditional social, religious, and political ideas that were considered constraints of the earlier Baroque

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