18th Century Art
So, why, given your sound position on the times and viewer responses like mine, would some call these works propaganda?
Can a work of great art, specifically great Romantic art, still be a work of propaganda? The answer must be 'yes.' The art of David is unapologetically pro-Napoleon, and David's Napoleon is a figure who represents the hope of France because of the beauty, majesty, and centrality of the leader with the frame David's paintings. However, the active nature of the lines and shadings of David's painting makes Napoleon come alive in a way that stands as testimony to the painter's talent. Even someone with no feelings about the leader who inspired David feels stirred, gazing at the painting. The painting transcends time and the man and the events that inspired David's portraits. The viewer thinks about the types of hero-worship that are common to our time, not just David's age.
Likewise, Goya's "Third of May" was inspired by the artist's outrage at particular, real-world events of his day. But even as the memory of the terrors that inspired the work have come and gone, the figures in Goya's painting, to a contemporary viewer, come to represent all innocent persons who suffer at the hands of soldiers in wartime. In the face of the haunted, hunted man at the center of the work the viewer of today no longer sees a Spaniard of Goya's time but the face of a victim of any number of the atrocities on the front pages of the news.
Goya's work is propaganda because it was meant to change people's minds and spark anger at the actions of the French soldiers, just as David's work was supposed to encourage the worship of Napoleon. But like all great art, the work has taken on a new life beyond even the conscious intention of the artist in the ways the art acts on the subconscious of the viewer.
This oil painting is 8 feet tall by 10 feet wide (Fiero 51). Each of these artists glorified in enormous paintings a hero, theatrically presented, that the common man might identify with. The "Corsican Upstart" that was Napoleon, is shown in propagandistic, larger-than-life style by Gros and David, who first met in 1796 in Italy. These two painters influenced each other and became huge successes through their depictions of the
18th Century What makes the 18th century such a vast plethora of diverse opinions, creations and philosophies is the fact that the world was changing in a variety of ways. The Industrial Revolution and rationalism were having profound effects upon previously held religious and esthetic ideals. While some passionately pursued new directions of thought, science and art, others held desperately to old philosophies. Furthermore the different countries of the globe
18th century a number of races and nationalities were in the process of settling North America. The variety of ethnicities and cultures included, but were not limited to: Native Americans, Spanish, English, French, Germans and Jews, yet eventually the dominant races in North America were the English, Anglo-Saxons and Spanish. Interestingly enough, both groups featured a historical background that was likely much more religious than the other groups that
It wasn't always a matter of stealing the designs or the parts for a specific technology, Harris explains: "…the arts never pass by writing from one country to another," he quotes from a French official writing in 1752. "The eye and practice alone train men in these activities" (Harris, 43). In 18th Century Italy Pope Innocent XII had set up a hospice in Laterano for the poor, and the Pope instituted
The exoticism and escapism of Romantic Art is manifest by the focus in the features of Napoleon on the bright or the wider scenes of the battlefield. However, it is the works of Francisco Goya that perhaps most perfectly epitomizes the intense individualism and emotion of Romantic art. Even the titles of Goya's works like "Yo lo Vi (This I saw)" and "Para Eso Yo Nacido (for this I
Relationship of "The Old English Baron" and "Vathek" to 18th Century English Gothic Fiction The rise of Gothic fiction in English literature coincided with the advent of the Romantic Era at the end of the 18th century and beginning of the 19th century. Gothic masterpieces such as Shelley's Frankenstein, Lewis's The Monk, and Stoker's Dracula would capture the imagination by fueling it with the flames of horror, suspense, other-worldliness and mystery.
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