CHAPTER 21 THE STILL LIFE
CHAPTERS 22 & 23 neoclassicism.
Jacques rouveyrol CHAPTER 21 NATURE MORTE (and genre scenes).
In the style of XVII with Delaporte, Desportes, Oudry, still life continues its tradition. Virtuoso painting, decorative painting, minor genre, it brings with it no "spirit." We have to wait for Chardin that gender is increased to a level of spirituality which the Dutch still lifes of the seventeenth is a foreshadowing.
1. This question first, it is less represent things that restore their presence at the suggestion of their materiality. La Pipe de Chardin not staged anything extraordinary, precious, "decorative". Only one presence. That things not given, but asked that; that of the user. Render the handling of objects suggests the hand that uses it and then abandoned them for a while.
2. Rococo installs her scenes in the moment, that of pleasure, discovery by the look of a show sensual, erotic. Chardin, by contrast, the timeless search . This Woman drawing water from the fountain ancestral repeats a gesture in a manner so immediate, unthinking, it is all-integer taken this action so that its existence, she joined the timelessness the existence of this gesture. 
3. In contrast to the Rococo, is simplicity, humility, discipline, economy of means. This glass of water, the pitcher and the accompanying garlic, this rough wooden table and the bottom wall without siding, there is nothing superfluous, nothing accidental, everything is essential. This is the very nature of things being painted.
4. And so does human beings as things: they are concentrated . No distraction who dissociate themselves (dress, attitude, conventions, etiquette). Then, the absorption of the character in its occupation escape the fact the viewer and gives it an existence inside an intensity of presence. Unlike the theatrical characters of Greuze or "superficial" Boucher. Like The Lacemaker Wermeer of the young man is entirely focused on one task and one: the cutting of his pencil. It acquires a "thickness" of even greater that it remains more impenetrable to the visitor that we are absolutely unaware that it existed. 
5. What is found then it is already perfect serenity found in Dutch painting of De Hooch, for example, those women who, in the interior of their home rows read or peeling potatoes. As the wife of Chardin. 
6. It is therefore not so much represent the reality of re-constitute . It is not so much to make forms objects that are painted that make their matter. "We can not understand this magic ... Approach, everything blurs, flattens and disappears, walk away, everything is created and reproduced "Diderot wrote about the works of Chardin .......... .................................................. ...................... *
Thus, with the Rococo painting history rose to second place, behind the scene kind of frivolous and lightweight. The moral of the genre scene (Hoghart, Greuze) fails to raise painting to the ideal. This is still life and the "return" of the scene type of guy that Dutch seventeenth paradoxically manages to achieve this elevation.
But history painting is always in the background. Neoclassicism would try to restore it to first place.
CHAPTER 22 - Neoclassicism OR "THE TRUE STYLE": PAINTING AND SCULPTURE.
I. INTRODUCTION
1. We saw the scene kind fail in his attempt to glorification. First, because rococo sensationalism that penetrates everywhere. Secondly, because the dramatization of the subjects ( The ungrateful son and the son punished by Greuze, for example) is not sufficient to join the values of "aristocratic" of history painting. Between the death of the father and that of Hector, there is a world, an abyss.
2. Ironically, the inferior kind of still life that reaches a degree of idealization which gives it a noble comparable to that of history painting. But only with Chardin.
3. Moreover, the taste "historic" is to strengthen the excavations at Pompeii and Herculaneum excavations that bring Rome in the foreground. The use of this antiquity and in response to sensationalism considered decadent Rococo, a new trend is emerging: the neo-classicism (or the "True Style")
4. Yet, initially, the fashion of the ancient blends with the Rococo. This is less the story that inspired the decor and costume. Thus obviating the Greek Young Love Vien.
Sometimes it is also the subject, provided he has something erotic. A painting by Vien The Merchant of Love, inspired by a fresco Roman gets in its details, a significant change (see below). 
II. RETURN TO THE HISTORY OF PAINTING.
1. Inspiration antique statuary.
a. Winckelmann, a German, is the theorist of neoclassicism. It must start in his two discoveries perfect copies: The Apollo Belvedere (circa 350 BC) and Laocoon (c. 25 BC).
-> The Apollo: It is marble, a material that unless another stone or wood lets see its constitution, a material that yields to the shape the sculptor gave him. It is the triumph of pure thought on the matter. His gaze ve door to infinity signifying that there is nothing in this world that deserves attention. It is impassible, which manifests the sense of control by the mind. But this ideal is now lost. -> The Laocoon : It is the struggle, no suffering. Mastery of mind over body. The Stoic ideal. Laocoon, bitten by the snake (it almost follows the path of the poison in the veins and muscles of the estate which tetanizing) probably feels pain efrfroyable, but his mind, like Stoic completely dominates. What can I, "asks the philosopher against the pain? I am master of what happens (without, as it happens ) ? And besides, it for me there? I'm that mind that accepts or rejects what's happening, exactly. And this body of mine is something that happened to me , not really me. As a result I am detached from the pain: hurts but I do not suffer . The pain is not suffering.
b. Ideally lost must be found ... in the art. But contemporary art (XVIII) is not of Greek art. It can not compete with him. It must move away as possible. How?
-> First, we must not imitate nature. Caravaggio was a disaster. Nature is more beautiful, and now it is corrupt. Greece man was naturally beautiful and the sculptor had to go to the stadium or the gym to meet her models. How do I find this beauty?
- By imitation synthesis dear to Zeuxis or practiced by Raphael borrow here and there fragments of beauty and together to create a complete beauty.
- By the idealization . The painting of the Renaissance, already revamping the natural according to the canons of beauty. She idealized natural beings, made appearances in the words of Malraux.
- By imitation of Greek statuary .
c. The Greek statue mimics the (beautiful) nature (lost). The painter should imitate the ancient statues. The body of the athlete, the Greek profile, breaks.
d. What, then, the characters (Identified by Winckelmann) of Greek beauty?
- Beautiful nature, exemplified by the statues of Phidias, Praxiteles or Polyclitus.
- the noble outline of sway of classical Greek sculpture.
- The diaphanous drapery or fold wet which highlights the forms.
- The calm grandeur. That of Laocoon. All muscles are tense, stunned by the progress of the venom in his veins, but the mouth does not scream and face does not express suffering but determination. The triumph of mind over body.
-> is this beauty that we must imitate. Imitating not copy . That is to say, produce, from nature, a beauty that is superior to nature.
e. There are no fewer abnormalities in neoclassicism. The Fates Carstens, unlike Laocoon, and mastery Stoic cry is lost.
2. Inspiration antique heroism.
Two models are competing in Greece. Alexander, the conqueror who ensures mastery of the world. The Stoic (Marcus Aurelius was emperor and Stoic also) that ensure self-control. The hero is the second neoclassical (he became the first, at the time of its decline, with the cult of Napoleon). It follows from this model that death (as it is what inspires us the largest and most irrational fears, so that what our Master should be exercised first and foremost) will be one of the dominant themes of neoclassical painting.
a. death as a means of reaffirming the loyalty marriage cons libertinism Rococo: the faithful wife, the grieving widow. Thus Andromeda crying she Hector (David).
b. The death of the hero. -> From hero to meet: Socrates, Seneca, Leonardo da Vinci, etc..
-> From a military hero Achilles, Pallas, Hector, etc..
-> From the Republican hero, especially Cato, Gracchus Caillus, Bara, General Wolfe and especially Marat (David).
It is interesting to note (we'll do a little later) what unites and what this painting of Marat away from painting the XVth century. c. But there are also stoic hero who faces death not for himself but, worse still, for her relatives. David and painted The Lictors related to Brutus the bodies of his son he himself had executed for treason. And, while the women wail and yield to the passion of despair, Brutus remains master of his suffering and ensure the triumph of reason over these passions.
Same for Guerin painted The Return of Marcus Sextus who finds his wife dead but whose face no one reads it does not suffer pain because the control . Yet pain is indicated in the composition of the painting by cross formed by the horizontal body of the dead and the vertical Marcus Sextus.
III. JACQUES-LOUIS DAVID (1748 - 1825)
He is the leader of the neoclassical and certainly the best representative of this current. By comparing the manifesto represented The Oath of 1784 with Horace Rococo works by Fragonard, Watteau and Boucher, one can characterize the "real style".
-> It requires rule where there had been licensed (the array is composed of vertical and horizontal. No curves or bends. Everything is right). -> It requires rigor where there was the luxury (no lavish sets, colorful costumes, but a severe generalized
.--> It requires virtue where there was sensuality (not women, right, who can awaken the desire as Boucher even in Greuze. Only the heroic virtue of the three brothers is highlighted).
-> It imposes truth where there was virtuosity (Virtuosity is misleading: it shows off the artist's gesture and forget what the work produced by this gesture represents. We admire the quality, silky fabrics painted by Watteau and invites him to be forgotten a feast for the senses that makes the table).
-> He contrasts the simplicity finish (just as the tunic is a tunic and some traits mark the folds. The Rococo requires something more: the multitude of nuances and movements of a cloth).
-> He opposes a limited palette to the palette rich rococo.
-> He still opposes the depth to which since the Renaissance, live painting, the frontal or surface (the vanishing point in The Oath of Horace is ahead: the blade swords. The decoration of columns and arches is just behind the characters. al''impression is a frieze . Same in The Lictors relating to Brutus the bodies of his son ).
-> If the work is the rococo private commission (the erotic works done they certainly do not agree to all audiences), the work falls within neoclassical public procurement (the works of heroism is just for everyone).
-> Besides, what are public virtues it preaches (heroism), while works unless otherwise rococo moralizing (Greuze, for example) depict private virtues (such as filial piety and marital fidelity). The reference is to Rome, of course. Through Tacitus but also tragedians of the past century: Corneille, Racine have in common is that all their tragedies revolve around the opposition public / private. The choice is always between serving his glory, the throne, the state or be enslaved to his feelings, his passions: love or friendship. Often the man will choose the public while women look for private and intrigue.
Another work of David expresses all these features to perfection. It Marat murdered (see above). Simplicity, rigor, severity, frontal. Everything is there. But most opposition up / down very remarkable. Top ... nothing. The bottom is not even a wall (at Chardin). Nothing. Unlike the mercy of Christ the fifteenth century which David has probably inspired (which we see Christ, the body half-emerged from a tomb, dead but showing his wounds and eye input ' open and supported by angels) there is no heaven for that man and immortality, therefore, quality must therefore héros.Il, bottom, compensate for something. This is the "A Marat, David" printed on the box that serves to Marat inkstand. What does it mean? It is a monument in memory of Marat. Immortality (which is the hero) does not pass by heaven, but by the memory of man who says Marat David.
CHAPTER 23: Neoclassicism OR "THE TRUE STYLE": ARCHITECTURE.
I. IN RESPONSE AGAINST THE ROCOCO
rococo architecture, is the curve (Baroque exacerbated) and ornament. The neoclassical architecture, is the right (Greek or Roman) and simplicity. Witness the contrast between the Monastery of Melk on the Danube (1702) and the Madeleine church in Paris (1806).
II. MODELS
Neoclassicism sought his models in antiquity, of course. But this antiquity is allowed to reach in two ways:
1. Directly. Then the Greek or Roman temple. Witnesses Church of the Madeleine and the Palais Brongniart (Paris Stock Exchange) began in 1806.
2. Indirectly . Then the Villa Renaissance. Is that the Renaissance was already back to antiquity.
III. The IDEAL GEOMETRIC.
feature, apparently it's neoclassicism (and we shall soon see, the use that was made by totalitarian regimes, Nazi and Soviet), there are many more projects (grand ) than successes. effective. And in all these projects, the simplicity of the geometric figure.
1. Etienne Louis Boullee (1728-1799 )
The most spectacular of his inventions is probably the Draft Cenotaph for Isaac Newton 1784 whose sphere with holes and dive the day in the dark at except the light coming in through these holes would represent a night sky as night, internal lighting should include the solar system.
But we must add a drawing for the entrance of a cemetery, a drawing for the door of a city, that of an ideal library, and other yet.
2. Claude Nicolas Ledoux (1736-1806)
Many projects geometric architecture integrated with the natural environment and integrating functional concerns: House guards farm house loggers, etc.. He is the beautiful Pavilion granting Vilette.
3. In reality, it is more "moderate". The geometrism the pure pandering to the individual who still has a taste for "manners" of the century. Witness the Hotel de Salm in Paris by Pierre Rousseau.
III. THE EVOLUTION OF LATE CENTURY
At the end of the century, neoclassicism evolving in three directions: archaeological purism, well represented by Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, the abstraction , illustrated by the granting of Pavilion La Vilette, Ledoux who knows only the circle and the right; exoticism, but finally represents a "decadence" of the movement. Witnesses Las Vegas (minus the casinos) before the letter, the curious Gardens, Kew architectures in which the world (temple, mosque, etc.) and were satisfied.
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