The Rococo Style and the Enlightenment Essay

The Rococo Style

Rococo - which refers to an 18th-century painting in Paris, France - is characterized by the use of light colors and curvy styles of the lining. It tried to communicate and pass across aspects and messages of youth among the painters, nature and love affairs not forgetting entertainment and strange encounters. Mirrored glasses and modest materials were used for decoration. It was also characterized by graceful curves together with elegance, asymmetry and lovely new paintings of daily life and love. Also, the exterior of the rococo buildings often looks simple while the interior is well decorated. This style often evoked awe and splendor at first sight. The floors of the churches were decorated complexly in such a way that it featured interlocking oval while the palaces offered utterly different points of view the painting style. Paris salon refers to the official annual and biennial art exhibition events in the western world started in the 16th century. Ballet d' action refers to the18th-century ballet movement that focused on and expressed character and emotions through dancers' face and bodies, unlike the use of props and costumes. Rococo expressed itself in Germany as oval domes, magnanimously painted, over the navel. Thomas Gainsborough was an English portrait and landscape painter, printmaker and draughtsman.

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The Enlightenment

The Enlightment was an 18th - century movement of British and French writers, scholars, philosophers, thinkers, and inventors to impart people with knowledge and rational change to live lives free from the traditional authorities whose ways of life they questioned. It was aimed at opposing the tradition and proposing better solutions to better the society they inhabit. They believed that the sovereign will be belonged to the people and thus the need to be left to make decisions independently and that the people have natural rights and voice in government. According to them, people were born with life, property and freedom hence there was no need of strictly inducing in people the misconceptions and beliefs of cultures and strict monarchial governance. Philosophes were the 18th-century intellectuals of Enlightment, and they used reason to attack superstitions, bigotry, and misconceptions along with baseless beliefs. They studied politics, history, social phenomena, economics, and sciences critically and came up with general truths concerning particular behaviors. They carefully analyzed situations and put forward solutions. Encyclopedia refers to reference book with summarized information and knowledge from various disciplines. Rousseau considered education to be the most important and paramount of all things. Adam Smith states that the wealth of nations provides the comprehensive account of market society like in decentralized system in which prices coordinates the effective allocation of resources in a competitive economy. Kant states that the rightness or wrongness of an action is not reliant on their consequences but their fulfillment of one's duty.

The Bourgeois Response

The middle classes ventured majorly in arts whereas the affluent were not in line with the artists due to their perceived posh living standards. Surprisingly, these middle-class artists pursued their tasks to achieve economic stability. Chardin and Greuze's paintings were quite appealing to the middle classes in that they are carefully and beautifully made, with a semblance of the 18th century Rococo art. The novel is known to have developed over a period of about two thousand years, having originated from the ancient Greece and Rome. It also traces its origin in the old Romance and the tradition of the novella, hence the name novel, the name of the Biblical Italian short story. It is known as the first novel came into existence in the early 18th century. The book is known to be a record of the typical human series of events in their societies, capturing events spanning long periods and different settings in addition to many characters. Early novels could also capture fictional activities deemed to be exaggerated and out of ordinary human capabilities such as in the form of a movie.

Music in the Age of Enlightenment

Classical music gets noted as a tricky genre usually because everything is uninformed before jazz sounds similar to it. Classical music and the baroque music are known to be using orchestras to give their unique sounds, but the manner in which each sound does it is different. Joseph Haydn was a composer of Australia, and he was one of the prominent and most prolific composers of classical duration. He wrote 107 symphonies including 45 piano trios, 83 string, 14 masses 62 piano sonatas and 26 operas just to mention but a few. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart composed 25 piano concertos, 50 symphonies, 27 concertos, 12 violin concertos, 103 minutes, 26 string quartets, 21 opera works and 15 masses. An accurate picture of Mozart both critically and biographically reveals that he started to perform and write for a more popular audience and become famous. Symphonies are usually written in four movements. Typically, the first movement is fast tempo which states the themes of the piece. The second one is slow, lyrical movement. Dance like movement become the third one, and the fourth movement becomes finale that usually sounds heroic, bold and holds strong feature with strong cadenza ending. Some example of the fourth movement symphony is Vivace movement and Allegro movement.

The Neoclassical Style

The artistic style called neoclassicism happened to have been the dominant movement in the European architecture and art during the 18th century. Ancient sculpture collection by Villa Albani became the most excellent private collection, and that made one of the factors which inspired neoclassicism. Notably, the grand tour which elite practice of the transalpine travelers moving to Italy to learn the remains of the canonical works and antiquity of both modern and ancient art become another crucial factor that inspired neoclassicism. The neoclassical residence built throughout America and Europe symbolized virtues including rationality, responsibility, and democracy which became known as a government style which aimed to inspire nationalism, patriotism, and courage. Joshua Reynolds was English painter who specialized in portraits. He was among the principal European painters in the 18th century. Reynolds promoted the ''Grand style '' in his work that relied on the idealization of imperfect. He is known as the first and founder of Royal Academy. David won wide acclaim using his vast canvases on the classical themes. In 1789, when the French revolution started David briefly served as an artistic director and painted the martyrs and leaders. He was afterward appointed as a painter to Napoleon.

The Age of Satire

Satire gets noted as a literary term and a form of rhetoric which uses various techniques to critique society, expose flaws and ridicule politics. Such techniques include irony, humor, and exaggeration. Satire is usually used in the work of literature to illustrate foolishness or vice in organization, humans or governments. Jonathan Swift is one of the famous satirists in literature. He is considered genius in his work because of his experience in politics, religion, and science. He opens the way for satire as an author of Gulliver's travel. The works of swift including his lifestyle date the humanities of Age of reason hence providing the reader with a glimpse of the man's life during that time. Voltaire was a writer of Age of Enlightenment and a French Philosopher. Voltaire's intelligence and style made him the most excellent writer in France. In Candide, the known parody Enlightenment intellectuals, the moral lesson is that we stay in the all the possible worlds.