America Collects Eighteenth-Century French Painting

2019 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 457-459
Author(s):  
Jessica L. Fripp
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
French Painting

Le rococo, une construction historiographique : introduction

2017 ◽  
Vol 80 (4) ◽  
pp. 467-473
Author(s):  
Carl Magnusson
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Golden Age ◽  
Artistic Development ◽  
Interior Decoration ◽  
French Painting ◽  
Ideological Background

Abstract In Rococo historiography, the first half of the eighteenth century is generally described as the golden age par excellence of decoration. The so-called major arts are often considered to have played a lesser role in its artistic development. The period is thus systematically associated with artefacts produced by artisans, hence belonging to a less dignified category in the artistic hierarchy. In order to investigate the ideological background of this assumption, the article focuses on the debates on art which emerged, mainly in France, in the 1740s. These highly biased discourses, targeting the so-called bad taste of contemporary French painting and interior decoration, shaped a vision of the first half of the eighteenth century of which many aspects were later inherited by Rococo historiography, especially in its relation to decoration.

Epicurean tastes: towards a French eighteenth-century criticism of the image of pain

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tomas Macsotay
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Religious Practice ◽  
States Of Mind ◽  
French Painting

This chapter argues that eighteenth-century French painting reserved a special type of image criticism for the scene of horror, taking a close look at works by prominent members of the Paris Académie Royale, in particular Fragonard’s Corésus et Callirhoe (1765). As these analyses will show, painting in France was responding to the retreat of a Christological, redemptive or punitive rationale for showing violence. Through writings by Dubos and Falconet, but also Diderot’s comments on Corésus et Callirhoe, this chapter argues that these new images of hurt allow new forms of distanced and unstable viewing. These depend on an epicurean form of reasoning that interconnects religious practice, fear, lust and disillusionment. The critical beholder who traverses these epicurean states of mind ends up calling into question the reality of the image beyond the drives of the appetites and anxieties of the beholder. This epicurean-inspired criticism of the image of pain opens up an opportunity for audiences to watch themselves act out a connection with the hurt body, but they also expose the image’s falseness, leaving the victim ‘unredeemed’.

Le rococo est-il décoratif?

2017 ◽  
Vol 80 (4) ◽  
pp. 528-543
Author(s):  
Carl Magnusson
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Golden Age ◽  
Artistic Development ◽  
Interior Decoration ◽  
French Painting ◽  
Ideological Background

Abstract In Rococo historiography, the first half of the eighteenth century is generally described as the golden age par excellence of decoration. The so-called major arts are often considered to have played a lesser role in its artistic development. The period is thus systematically associated with artefacts produced by artisans, hence belonging to a less dignified category in the artistic hierarchy. In order to investigate the ideological background of this assumption, the article focuses on the debates on art which emerged, mainly in France, in the 1740s. These highly biased discourses, targeting the so-called bad taste of contemporary French painting and interior decoration, shaped a vision of the first half of the eighteenth century of which many aspects were later inherited by Rococo historiography, especially in its relation to decoration.

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