Lecture The Romantic
Romanticism in art has a very different meaning from the
word 'romantic'. The word 'romantic' is normally associated with 'love' and 'sweet'
things. In art the Romantic era, or Romanticism, means focusing on the
spiritual, surreal and expressive side of art. Romanticism is about emotion and
feelings.
Raymond Lister said, "Romanticism is the concerned with
the particular, and the most important aspect of the particular is the individual:
especially the artist, who, in Romantic eyes, was seer, a prophet, an
interpreter of mysteries... so he above all men, held the keys to truth."
Lister says that the artist is a prophet and an interpreter through his art and
that the artist himself can see the truth.
Artists of the Romanticism movement turned away from the
classic style, creating paintings and drawings that had more of an emphasis on intense
feelings, in particular the emotions of horror, terror and awe. It was about imagination,
passion, the power of nature, and revolution. It was the opposite to
Neoclassicism. Romantic art drew on 'dark' Medieval and Gothic times, as well
as mythology and folklore.
Hieronymus
Bosch was a European painter of the late Middle Ages. His paintings portray the sins and follies of
humankind and the consequences of these actions. Bosch's paintings contain many complex, imaginative and obscure
symbols. One of his paintings made in this style was 'The Garden
of Earthly Delights' (1504).
The painting depicts three scenes. The panel on the left
shows the Garden of Eden with Adam and Eve living peacefully in paradise before
they took the apple. The middle panel shows a chaotic scene with people giving
in to their desires. There are surreal and weird buildings, animals and
figures, some of which are deformed. Finally, the last panel depicts hell and
what will happen to you if you let your earthly desires take control. Bosch
painted the emotions of horror with scenes of war and fire. He even created
creatures of hell that feed on the souls doomed to spend eternity there.
This painting shows some of the emotions, surreal and
expressive style that would have had a response by the audience, similar to
what the Romantics intended. There were bad things out there and terrible
things could happen. Man was no match for nature (or God).
Many of the paintings in this style show scenes of horror
and death, but also a spiritual side. The painting 'Triumph of Death' by Pieter
Brueghel gives the viewer the scene of death, which is depicted as skeletons
coming for the living. Death is like an angel that decides who will die. It
also implies that it doesn't matter who you are, death will come for you
eventually. This would have a particular hold on people at the time. It was
painted at a time when people believed there was a god, angels and that an army
of death would physically come take you away.
Romanticism was a response to the Enlightenment values of
reason and order in the aftermath of the French Revolution of 1789. Where
'classical' is calm and orderly, 'romantic' is wild, energetic and spiritual,
and sometimes full of terror and dread.
The power of nature as seen in the Lisbon Earthquake in 1755
and the tsunami and fire storm afterwards that killed about 15000 people was a
reminder that people are at the mercy of nature, (nature being synonymous with
God). Romantic art portrayed the beauty and power of the natural world in a
personal way. It was about individual feelings, not common themes. Throughout
Romantic paintings, there are many examples of shipwrecks. Gericault's "Raft
of the Medusa" is probably one of the most famous of all Romantic
paintings. There are also blizzards, fires, storms, floods, earthquakes and
biblical disasters represented. It wasn't all storms and disasters, Romantics
such as John Constable expressed his response to the English countryside. The
subjective, highly personal view of nature in his landscapes were praised as
being individual, a central and important theme in Romanticism.
Romanticism was also about conflict and revolution. It
championed spiritualism over science, democracy
over subjugation, and nature over industry. It was in some ways a reaction
against the industrial revolution and issues such as slavery. The Romantics
championed the oppressed, the underdog. The French painter Delacroix in his
painting, 'The Massacre at Chios' showed his support in the Greek's
struggle for independence against the Turkish Empire.
He highlighted the terrible price they were paying. The Romantics also wanted
to improve social and political conditions. They wanted to magnify any
occurrence of inhumanity or suffering so we can see it better. The Romantics wanted to raise the profile of man's
inhumanity to man and promote individual liberty.
One of the greatest pieces of literature that came from the
philosophy of Romanticism is, "A Philosophical Inquiry into the origin of
our ideas of The Sublime and Beautiful", by Edmund Burke. The 'beautiful'
is the humanism and the sublime if the darker side of human nature and beyond.
And The book is like the philosophical reason for Romanticism. A lot of dark
and Gothic literature has stemmed from this book.
In short, the "beautiful" according
to Burke, is what is well-formed and aesthetically pleasing, whereas the
"sublime" is what has the power to compel and destroy us. The
preference for the sublime over the beautiful was to mark the transition from
the Neoclassical to the Romantic era.
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