Classicism In Art

In 1909 F.T. Marinetti’s ‘Founding and Manifesto of Futurism’ declared “a roaring car that seems to ride on grapeshot is more beautiful than the Victory of Samothrace,” a statement indicative of the Futurist movement’s aversion to classicism. However, four years later, the Futurist artist Umberto Boccioni created Unique Forms of Continuity in Space, which despite being an icon of modernism, is regularly compared to the Victory’s dynamic pose. This paper explores the circumstances around this visual similarity, questioning whether it could be the result of Boccioni’s classical training, his interest in the work of Auguste Rodin and Medardo Rosso who combined the classical with the modern, or whether Boccioni could have deliberately chosen to appropriate the sculpture in order to supersede it. This case study opens up both questions about the reception of the classical in early-twentieth-century Italy and the nature of Futurism’s relationship with its cultural heritage.

During the last two centuries before the Renaissance of the arts in Italy in the 15th century, different waves of classical trends marked the artistic creation of both Byzantine and western worlds. Between 1220 and 1260 in particular, a parallel development of the revival of ancient forms is noted in both of the above-mentioned traditions. Various artistic expressions later developed independently.
The various artistic tendencies of the period under discussion are well known by the critics but usually Byzantine and Western cultures are studied separately. In the present paper, it is interesting to expose some aspects of the revivals of ancient art in both worlds, namely Byzantine and Latin, during the 13th and 14th centuries. In this way, it will, firstly, be possible to establish a more appropriate method for examining the origin of this extensive wave of ancient revival that took place during the 13th century. Secondly, it is useful to note how this Proto-Renaissance gave way under the weight of more conservative Byzantine forms in 14th century Byzantine painting and, thirdly, it is instructive to show an interpretation of how, in the West, namely in Italy, the classical forms developed unimpeded from 1260 onwards so that they eventually continued into the great Renaissance.
For this purpose, I shall first briefly expose the historical and political situation of the Byzantine Empire vis-à-vis the European world during the period under consideration. I shall then touch upon the artistic phenomena, pointing out the most characteristic cases.

Il contributo, attraverso l'analisi delle opere acquistate dal Comune di Roma all'Esposizione Internazionale di Belle Arti del 1883, propone una riflessione sulla fortuna della ripresa dell'antico nell'arte italiana post-unitaria contestualizzando l'esposizione nello scenario europeo di fine secolo.

After an introduction into the history of book illustrations from the second half of the 18th century to the late 19th century follows a sketch of the evolution of illustrations for Johann Wolfgang Goethe’s novel “The Sorrows of Young Werther” from 1775 to 1870.
The featured illustrations can be divided into groups of approximately 10 central motives. The resting points of the narrative were chosen by artists for many illustrations: They depict the sentimental and idyllic scenes.
The interpretation of the illustrations is focused on the possibilities to gain new, esp. social psychological ways of understanding the novel.

Giorgio Vasari (1511-74) as an artist and art historian of Italian Mannerism viewed himself as huomo buono et docto in buon letter (a fine and learned man). 1 In choosing to practice various arts such as writing treatises, collecting drawings, painting decorative cycles, designing buildings, and decorating facades, Vasari was viewed by humanists as a virtuoso. This Tuscan painter, architect, art collector, writer, and art historian is best known for his Vite de' più eccellenti architetti, pittori e scultori italiani, da Cimabue insino a' tempi nostri (Lives of the Most Excellent Architects, Painters and Sculptors of Italy, from Cimabue to the present time), which was first published in 1550, followed by an enlarged edition illustrated with woodcuts of artists' portraits in 1568. 2 In 1960, Einar Rud (1892-1980), a Danish biographer and a scholar of Vasari, characterized him as the first art historian. 3 By virtue of Rud's text, Vasari is known as "the first art historian"-in particular, of Italian art-since Pliny the Elder wrote Book 35 on the History of Art in Ancient times in the Natural History, published posthumously in 79 CE. 4 It is almost impossible to imagine the history of Italian art without Vasari, so fundamental is his Vite (Lives). This sixteenth-century Italian work is the first real and autonomous history of art because of its monumental encompassing of all of the following: (1) preambles for explanatory data on the function of the text; (2) integration

Os presentes exposição e breve artigo pretendem traçar uma trajetória dos procedimentos de atribuição de materialidade a signos estéticos/poéticos, algo de grande relevância para o modernismo de inspiração libertária e materialista dialética, a partir da época de Courbet e Baudelaire. Tal trajetória é apontada a partir da ação em pintura do revolucionário pintor da Comuna de Paris, Gustave Courbet, na qual o artista produz, ou confecciona em poiesis, representações pictóricas que tendem à ―presentação‖ de matéria frente ao espectador de sua obra pictórica (―presentação‖ é o termo de que se vale Etienne Souriau, no livro A Correspondência das Artes). Tal matéria é o empaste (as massas de tinta a óleo) que não só mimetizam a imagem de pedras e rochedos, mas, possuem materialidade quase-pétrea, quase-rochosa. Baudelaire, a partir do uso do símbolo (num sentido utilizado por Goethe) deixa o leitor entre o mundo mental e o natural no seu poema Correspondences. Segundo Goethe, o símbolo é uma entidade linguística que, por fim, refere-se a algo cujos limites são imponderáveis (o ―infinito‖ no poema de Baudelaire, vagas impressões). Em Haroldo, no primeiro terço de A Máquina do Mundo Repensada, verifica-se a presença de uma escolha poética que se vale da ideia de rime petrose, em Dante Alighieri, mas, não somente, traz ao leitor a cosmovisão gnóstica de uma máquina do Cosmo no poeta toscano, e, mais, o símbolo judaico-cristão da própria face de Deus-Cristo, a princípio inserido no relato das concepções de universo ptolomaicas e escolásticas. Carlos Drummond de Andrade e seu ceticismo ao ver aparecer frente a ele certa Máquina do Mundo.

Andrea Mantegna, renowned today as a painter and print-maker, was praised in his own day for skills in sculptural relief. Two bronze works are attributed to him (one a self-portrait bust), and he designed objects such as a decorative tent pole, candlesticks and silver vases. His painted figures are famously stony and almost monochromatic, sometimes forming a relief-like composition set against fictive backgrounds of colored stone. Antique sculptures were an inspiration, the sarcophagus relief of a sea thiasos in particular often being cited in relation to his engraved Battle of the Sea Gods (1470s or early 1480s). The permeability of boundaries between media is here explored in relation to both the uses and theme of the Battle. Relatively early experiments in engraving, including the application of various inks, the two sheets comprising the horizontal frieze were greatly admired, observed closely by Albrecht Dürer in hand-drawn copies and reiterated in anonymous prints. But it is striking that the intaglio prints which accentuate tonal contrasts also spawned a number of molded terracotta friezes (in Bologna, Cremona, Lodi, Piacenza and elsewhere) and bronze statuettes (including inkstands of marine monsters). Notably, surviving copies of the Battle are mostly late impressions or on damaged sheets, as though they were frequently handled, and they were popular enough to soon require the re-engraving of the plates. Rather than a precious commodity valued and carefully preserved only by a learned elite from the very beginning, the Battle was put to use in the applied arts. Furthermore, while most scholars agree that the Battle's subject is related to the envious, irascible Telchines, who were a race of sculptors, it has not been understood that these mythological characters invented the art of metal-working rather than carved in stone. Whether or not Mantegna physically cut the copper plate, he could think of himself as a sculptor, as did other printmakers who signed plates with some variant on the verb sculpo (to carve, cut, grave, chisel). Mantegna was developing proficiency in a new, challenging technology, and experimenting with tonal variation and effects of relief by way of burin, ink and paper. In some ways the physical fabric of the metal plate, both sides of which were probably used for the two sheets of the Battle, was itself a sculpture, also depicting various metal objects like a mirror and a torch, and treating the theme of envy between battling sculptors.

Literary historians have often claimed that the 20th century was the century of the avant-gardes. Like all clichés, however, this one too has its limits, which are all too easy to point out. The title of this essay could suggest that it aims at a mere rhetorical inversion of that well-trodden cliché. But there is more to the phrase "the 20th century, century of the arrière-gardes”…

Contemporary art and architectural works inspired by the concepts of Classic, Anti-Classic and Liquid Architecture have been analized. For the dialectic relationship between Classic and Anti-Classic, the fundamental texts by Giulio Carlo Argan and Zevi have been examined, while for the genesis of the Liquid Architecture the analysis starts from the historical definition by Novak, who, starting from Argan's Renaissance, projects us into the Cyberspace throughout the use of mental algorythms of informatic inspiration typical of virtual reality. A comparison has been carried out between works of Boccioni and Duchamp and Gehry's architecures and between the themes of fractals, mazes and mirrors and some Museums built by internationally-renowned 'Archistar': Calatrava, Gehry, Koolhaas, Mendini, Niemeyer, and Nouvel. .

While recent studies on Italian Fascism have considered the regime's colonial project in Libya and Ethiopia, it is also necessary to analyze racism and its construction in the peninsula. The official magazine La difesa della razza (1938–1943) sought to provide scientific and cultural bases for Italian racism and anti-Semitism by citing anthropological studies as well as ancient sources. My paper examines its use of images, specifically the juxtaposition of classical, African, and modernist references. Thus, I focus on the ways in which classical art was represented alongside African individuals and/or sculptures in order to construct a racist ideology rooted on the civilized-primitive dichotomy. Despite the fact that La difesa della razza extolled the greatness of classical art while denigrating modern art, many of its covers recall Giorgio de Chirico's metaphysical paintings, Man Ray's photographs, and Hannah Höch's photomontages. Though the aforementioned artists utilized classical and/or African elements to question European culture, this fascist publication adopted a similar aesthetic to support its claims regarding the superiority of Italian race and culture across time. Hence, La difesa della razza demonstrates the heterogeneous and often contradictory ways in which fascist intellectuals justified the regime's racial policies, as they utilized the modernist sources they claimed endangered Italian civilization and its alleged racial purity. In any case, as with many other aspects of fascist official (and unofficial culture), modern art was at once disavowed and relied upon, thus constituting a peculiar case of modernist primitivism. Given the current existence of neo-Fascist parties within Italy, migration from Africa and the need for a more thorough reconsideration of fascist colonialism, my essay traces this nation's visual discourse on race as it emerged during the years leading up to World War II.

Bereits unmittelbar nach seiner Fertigstellung erfuhr das Gemälde »Blick in Griechenlands Blüte« von Karl Friedrich Schinkel großes Publikumsinteresse. Einerseits stellte die dargestellte Szene eines sich im Bau befindlichen Tempels ein neues Bildsujet dar. Andererseits dürfte auch der Verwendungszweck für Aufmerksamkeit gesorgt haben. Das Gemälde war zwar ohne öffentlichen Auftrag geschaffen worden, aber aufgrund seiner Raffinesse von der Stadt Berlin als Geschenk für Prinzessin Luise von Preußen anlässlich ihrer Hochzeit mit Prinz Friedrich der Niederlande angekauft worden. Bevor es in deren Besitz überging, war es mehrere Tage öffentlich in Berlin ausgestellt worden und hinterließ bei diversen Intellektuellen einen bleibenden Eindruck. Seither wurden zahlreiche Analysen und Interpretationen zu »Blick in Griechenlands Blüte« vorgelegt. Dabei wurde in den neueren Publikationen
postuliert, dass Schinkel innerhalb des Gemäldes zwar mehrere Monumente des antiken Athen zitiert, das Bild aber – in Anbetracht auch nicht-athenischer Beispiele – als Allegorie einer griechischen Idealstadt zu verstehen sei. Anhand der Untersuchung der Antikenkenntnis und -rezeption Schinkels sowie der Rekonstruktion seiner Informationsquellen über das antike Griechenland wird im Folgenden zu zeigen sein, dass Schinkel sich in seinem Werk durchaus – und zwar explizit – auf das antike Athen bezog.

В статье рассматривается возникновение классицизма в античную эпоху. Сначала даётся краткий ретроспективный обзор понятия «классики» до эпохи Возрождения, затем история возникновения этого понятия у Авла Геллия и Цицерона. Далее мы представляем ретроспективную историю классической тенденции на примере споров азианистов и аттицистов, неотериков и любителей старой поэзии, и в античном отношении к пластическим искусствам. Затем следует обращение к эллинистическим поэтам и филологам и, наконец, мы прослеживаем происхождение классической тенденции в классическую эпоху — в частности, создание списков «избранных авторов», развитие художественных канонов и отношения между классицизмом в искусстве и стремлением к старым и «добрым» нравам.

The article discusses the genesis of classicism in the Antiquity. At first, we give a brief retrospective review of the concept of "classic" until to the Renaissance, then the emergence on this concept in Aulus Gellius and Cicero. Further, we present a retrospective history of the classical tendency on the example of the disputes between Asians and Atticists, neoterics and lovers of old poetry, and in the ancient attitude towards the plastic arts. Hereafter the article focuses on the Hellenistic poets and philologists and, finally, we trace the origin of the classical tendency in the classical age-particularly, the creation of lists of «selected writers», the development of artistic canons and the relationship between classicism in arts and the pursuit of the old and «good» mores.

Après la première journée d'étude consacrée aux portraits du Régent qui s'est tenue en septembre 2015, les organisateurs souhaitent creuser la question du politique au temps de Philippe II d'Orléans en ouvrant plus largement la réflexion à l'ensemble des représentations susceptibles de caractériser la notion de « crise » en ces temps troublés. L'un des aspects évoqués sera celui de la crise économique et politique, celle induite par le système de Law ou encore celle consécutive aux modifications introduites dans la conception du pouvoir. Une autre concernera le « système des arts », tant en ce qui a rapport au pouvoir qu'à la nouvelle conception de l'individu. En cela, une mise en question de ce qu'on a pu appeler la « crise de la conscience européenne » (Paul Hazard) s'imposera.

Antoine Le Pautre (1621-1679) demeure l’une des dernières grandes figures de l’architecture du Grand Siècle qui n’ait pas fait l’objet récemment d’une monographie. Il faut dire que la personnalité de cette artiste a quelque chose de déconcertant et que l’historiographie a généralement été sévère à son égard.
Génie précoce, il devint célèbre dès son premier chantier, la chapelle de Port-Royal à Paris, conçue en 1646, alors qu’il n’avait que vingt-cinq ans. Architecte du Roi à la même époque, l’un des premiers de l’Académie royal d’architecture en 1671, surintendant des Bâtiments de Monsieur, frère de Louis XIV, l’idée qu’il se faisait de son métier est difficile à cerner car peu de ses œuvres nous sont parvenues et qu’à la différence d’autres architectes, qui ont laissé un dossier graphique personnel important, les dessins de la main de Le Pautre à ce jour identifiés sont peu nombreux, hormis le recueil de gravures qu’il publia en 1652, sous le titre Desseins de plusieurs palais plans & élévations en perspective géométrique, ensemble les profiles élevez sur les plans… Il apparait pourtant que Le Pautre avait une main mise très importantes sur ces chantiers sur lesquelles il aimait travailler avec une équipe privilégiée de collaborateurs (sculpteurs, charpentiers et menuisiers). Cette main mise sur le chantier se retrouve dans l’attention qu’il portait au second œuvre, par le soin donné aux menuiseries, ferronneries..., et plus généralement aux ornements sculptés tant des façades que des décors intérieurs. Cela n’alla pas sans difficultés, comme le prouve ses relations avec l’entrepreneur Jean Girard avec lequel il travaille pendant près de dix, mais qui le conduise à le plaindre de lui devant l’Académie d’architecture en 1677.
En partant de l’analyse des planches gravées, des dessins identifiés, des œuvres subsistantes et surtout de documents d’archives, pour certains inédits, la présente communication tentera d’analyser la conception que Le Pautre se faisait du rapport entre architecture et décor.