UNWRITTEN CONFESSIONS: THEATRE and PLAY of EXPECTATIONS

Rococo was the elegant and cynical expression of the ideas of the eighteenth-century.In the twentieth century, art historians use Rococo to designate the art of the eighteenth century, mainly in France, and characterized what could be termed  “fun of out-of-place detail.”Such as  the girl who calmly arranges her hair while, in her presence and because of her, two men fight in a desperate hand-to-hand combat; a comic language with multiple narratives that paralleled the fashion of neoclassicism that arose from the discoveries at Pompeii near Naples beginning in 1750.

Fragonard. Washerwoman

Something like an out-of-place detail, albeit more integrated, exists  in Fragonard’s painting “Washerwomen”. The women are set in a typically rustic scene, but they are hanging up their laundry like figurants in an eighteenth-century ballet. Similarly, barefoot peasant women depicted pushing a barrow in a Boucher painting are supposed to have waded through dust and dirt with their spotless “white feet of duchesses that just escaped from their fur-brimmed slippers.” This particular Rococo mode of surprise termed  the “fun of the out-of-place detail,” appears in the language itself in the form of witty comparisons.

Boucher Brown Odalisque

… the painting itself could be used to signal to another party feelings of love or loyalty, and in the case of the portrait be used in the games of seduction. Desire and seduction play an enormous part in the Rococo. To appreciate what happens in these paintings we must understand some of the rules.

Three French artists, beginning with Jean-Antoine Watteau ( 1684-1721), then followed byFrancois Boucher and Jean Honoré Fragonard defined the French Rococo period spanning from the reign of Louis XIV “The Sun King” (1643-1715) to that of Napoleon Bonaparte. When one thinks of the Rococo, one immediately thinks of the decorative arts and ornamentation. If the Baroque was over the top in terms of style, Rococo paintings are often viewed as being even more frivolous, lighter, and immoral.

Synonymous with Rococo is the libertine and courtesan. We can see it as a transition period between the pious religious art of the early Louis Quartorze to the later “marble” severity of neoclassical art as exemplified by Jacques Louis David (1748-1825). It marked also a change in leisure pursuits as the countryside rather than the court became the locus for the ludic and erotic. We see this illustrated in Watteau’s famous fête galante paintings. (Stephen Pain)

""Portrait of Louise O"Murphy" is dated 1751, when Francois Boucher was 48 years of age. Thus, it may be considered a work belonging to the Mature period of Francois Boucher. "Portrait of Louise O"Murphy" is on display in Wallraf-Richartz Museum, Cologne, along with other famous artworks of the Rococo period."

Although Boucher had been tutored by Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin (1699-1779) and adopted his Dutch realist-like brushwork, one sees more of the neo-classical in the late Fragonard. Both Watteau and Boucher( 1703-1770) had a lighter touch, and would delineate portraits with few strokes that place their art, particularly their drawings in the modernist idiom of reduction. In the case of Watteau, like some of the impressionists, his portraiture was very much decorative, verging on the caricature as in the work the English painter and graphic artist William Hogarth (1697-1764). But Hogarth was foremost a social critic and satirist, while the three French artists were commissioned by the court and its circle. These conditions added to the decorative quality of the painting. One remarkable patron of the period was Madame de Pompadour, and her commissions helped shape the Rocco period.

Despite widespread prostitution, and general debauchery, the aristocrat and the middle-class person had to follow strict rules regarding courtship and display of affection. Much of the seduction was circumlocutory. One never got to the point directly. As it has been said of Laurence Sterne’s The Sentimental Journey, the eroticism was “suspended.” Having said that, Boucher and Fragonard pushed the limits of propriety, thus incurring the wrath of the art critics. ( see original article here: www.escapeintolife.com)

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Fragonard Confession of Love

A great step forward in establishing the Enlightenment as the internal form of the Rococo was made in 1963 by Roger Laufer.Laufer asserted that the Rococo is light and epigrammatic, curt, full of silences, without consequence and order and that the plaisanteries typically replace the proofs. For him, the Rococo presents a linearity of narration full of abundant details, without a real conclusion, always begging the question, always elegant of “faisande”, or as the texts say, “ragoutant”, a style stressing the decousu (desultory) and the dialogue. Everything is enlivened by a seriousness coupled with frivolity and producing a harmonieux desequilibre and a sophisticated ambiguity. The marionettes in their anecdotic actions reveal the sad truth of the insincerity of human relations, or the social norms that restricted their articulation in a meaningful and profound sense. They were still very much in the mold of Saint-Simon; a stifling formalism. If, measured by the norm of classicism, the Baroque is the sublime, then certainly the Rococo represents the graceful.

“In Rococo literature we find woman reigning supreme, with nature…often reduced to the stature of pastoral artifice. “The delicate, dazzling …beauty which put the last and most exquisite touch on the exterior adornment of life, accentuated its sparkling vivaciousness, interpreted its insouciance, although it laid bare something of its shallowness, its incapacity, or rather its unwillingness to pierce through the hard brilliant surface to the very heart of things.” ( Laufer)

Watteau. Venetian Pleasures

If we look at the two odalisque paintings we can see some of the codes. In the so-called brunette odalisque, L’odalisque (1745?), a painting of his wife, Boucher has deliberately emphasized the Oriental theme. The word “odalisque” means a female slave or concubine in a harem, but here the pose is of an aristocrat upon a luxurious sofa. The variation on turquoise is brilliant. The nude with brunette hair looks like the young Turkish women who were then fantasized about, Orientalism then in vogue. What is interesting, and important to note, that although naked, she does not stare directly at the viewer, it is more downward.

When we look at Blond Odalisque, a commissioned painting of Marie-Louise O’Murphy (1752c), Louis XV’s mistress, we see that she is obviously European. The tones are flesh colour, modulated to give form and feature to the body, whereas in the first painting the blue gives a marblish appearance to the painting. The second painting is more decorative, the model seems much younger, even babyish, whereas in the brunette painting the viewer feels the sensuous and tactile quality of the fabrics. ( Escapeintolife.com)

We can also see that in the painter’s odalisques there is an aesthetic dialogue between the body and the material. In Renaissance paintings, though artists were successful in drawing anatomy, they did not manage as Boucher does, to convey the sensation of pressure. Despite the princess look of the brunette odalisque, her posture is of availability. Her bottom is almost dead centre of the lines of perspective!

Fragonard. The Swing

Indeed this posture is the one found in an important erotic subgenre of the period, that of the woman awaiting an enema. In this subgenre the nude rests on a bed, and a maid or doctor waits to deliver an enema, the tell-tale clyster or syringe in their hand. This was an explicit pun on sexual intercourse, and perhaps even anal intercourse which was taboo. In both paintings the artist is careful to have the woman not looking directly at us.

Rococo art was heavily influenced by the dramatic arts, particularly theatre. The two enjoyed a symbiotic relationship since paintings required a plot and the theatre required decor and costumes. The painting Venetian Pleasure (1718) by Watteau is illustrative of this symbiosis. It shows the influence of the Italian dramatic forms which was very much in vogue at the time.

There is a lot going on in the painting, but first note the stylistic influence of Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (1696-1770) and perhaps Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640) in the emphasis on colour rather than drawing, an important criterion in art. The faces of the women, as we move from one to the other, almost form an arabesque. Our focus, however, is on the central woman in dialogue with the actor dressed in an Oriental costume.

Boucher. Amorous Couple in a Landscape

The painting has an operatic feel to it. The setting is theatrical rather than natural. Also note the orders of reality in this painting. There is the Venetian comic-theatrical world of the court, with aristocrats playing the parts, and the Greco-Roman classical world depicted by the statuary in the background. This contrast creates an aesthetic irony. Nearly everyone in the painting is courting; some more successful than others. We can see that often when a couple is in dialogue, a third party is looking at them, perhaps hurt or jealous.

This painting also illustrates the modernity of the period. The strict rules of depicting religion or the classical ideal have been broken. The social gathering is not much different from the groups of friends we find in nineteenth century paintings. Moreover, the statue of Venus that overlooks all the various lovemaking activities seems to be alive with erotic potential. The goat’s head on the large vase-like ornament directly above the central woman’s head is more sculptural and in keeping with classical mythology—this symbolic function is found in numerous Renaissance paintings. It connotes lust. This deliberate decision to make the nude statue alive is fascinating as it undermines the realist mimetic imperative, and simultaneously plays with the desires of the viewer. This is where the real dramatic tension rests, in the play of expectations.

Fragonard. Young Woman with Dog

Compare Watteau’s painting, particularly the sculpture of the goat’s head, with one by Fragonard, The Confession of Love (1771). Here we see that the woman is placed on a pedestal, literally—she is the art work, the tabeau vivant, and the confessor is taking more liberties in his affections than those in Watteau’s painting. The two sculptures, one of a putti (cupid) and another of a Goddess (Venus), are painted as if they were sculptures. They serve symbolic functions like the goat’s head in Watteau’s painting. The putti is in the form of a baby and the Goddess is its mother, suggesting that the end of courtship is marriage and children. However, the reaching for the apple also connotes carnality as in the Adam and Eve story. The dog placed at their feet is a double emblem. It can be both fidelity and a symbol of lust. Fragonard in another painting, Young Woman with Dog (1772), takes this latter element to an extreme, the dog becomes the actual object of lust—and according to some accounts, bestiality was not uncommon among aristocratic women. The landscape is also more “real,” aspiring to the Dutch landscape ideal, such as that found in the art of Jacob van Ruisdael (1628-1682).

This realism is counterpointed and even destabilized by the oval framing of the central figures by floral decor, a framing that reminds one of the flora decors on Rococo interior decor and in book plates. Perhaps it also prefigures the staging in Victorian photography where sitters were placed in ornate sets. We see in the painting how Fragonard managed to paint and remain current during the late Rococo into the neoclassical period. The statue has all the stiffness of a woman painted by Jacques-Louis David (1748-1825).

ADDENDUM:
The whole Rococo literature was slowly undermined after the publication of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Nouvelle Heloise (1761). This work, which has rightly been considered the source and origin of Romanticism, is opposed to anything for which the Rococo culture stood. … his radically different concept of love and his flight from the curt Rococo style into a new period style… Rousseau was, first of all, a man without humor. He therefore killed the wit and lightness of the Rococo and made himself the antagonist of Voltaire.

Crucial passages of the novel reveal the contrast between Rousseau’s Romanticism and the Rococo. St. Preux’s formal condemnation of his time is clear and outspoken: “All the secret events of the chronique scandaleuse are unveiled, good and evil are made equally pleasant and are equally ridiculed. … According to Rousseau, his century has debased love. Love is a mystery, not a sexual urge to be consented to and enjoyed.

With his device “Back to Nature” Rousseau stands behind all the views uttered by his heroes and heroines. Therefore the Rococo spirit is fought by stressing popular customs against artificial galanterie, personal honor against a socially dictated honor, the laws of nature against nasty principles, genuine love against infatuation, truth against social hypocrisy, virtue against the sophisms of philosophy, simple speech against amorous jargon.

Read More:

http://www.escapeintolife.com/essays/french-rococo-watteau-boucher-and-fragonard/

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3 Responses to UNWRITTEN CONFESSIONS: THEATRE and PLAY of EXPECTATIONS

  1. Dave says:

    will do this week and advise you. Also, the writer’s name did not appear on the site. But she will now be acknowledged in the hyper-link
    Best

  2. Dave says:

    I was told by the owner of the site it was someone else; Giordano. If you could ask the owner of the site to clarify this for me, I would be happy to give credit to Mr. Pain.

  3. Dave says:

    you are right, it is mr. pain’s picture on the bottom of the article. The owner said it was Giordano, but I can see there is some confusion there. will fix this shortly.

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