Danny Dormevil
Art History
October, 2014
Neoclassical Art vs. Romantic Art The contrast between Neoclassical and Romantic art displays a stark change in artistic movements beginning at the end of the 18th century. Changes in artistic movements often are the result of massive social and political shifts in a region, and Neoclassicism and Romanticism are no exception. This refocusing on new perspectives and inspirations that forged these movements, both separate and in tandem with one another, applied not just to visual art, but to every art form, from music to play-writing, as well as philosophy and science. Romanticisms preoccupation with themes such as man’s relationship with God, nature, and emotions came in direct and deliberate opposition to Neoclassicism’s preoccupation with logic and traditional views on artistic technique. Neoclassical art emerged out of the Enlightenment, primarily in Western Europe. Art, of all kinds, during in this period were informed by Enlightenment ideals, which were largely reactionary against the Renaissance period before it. The Renaissance was defined by its tremendous scientific and artistic progressions. However, toward the end of the Renaissance, resentment was mounting against the scientific and philosophical figures at the head of the movement. Science had deevolved into a show, with alleged scientists performing experiments in a manor that felt more like parlor tricks through repetition instead of making real scientific developments. The Renaissance gave the Western world a promise for technological and social progress, and when that never came to fruition, the Enlightenment wanted to take society to the place it had been previously promised. Thusly, the Enlightenment took to philosophy and the sciences with a new preoccupation with a new seriousness, attempting to take new leaps forward in biology, chemistry, and logic. The inspirations for this extended the world of artistic expression as well, and the best of all possible cultures for the West to be modeled after was the ancient Greeks. During the mid 17th century, the western world had no idol considered more appropriate a model civilization than that of the ancient Greeks. The term ‘neoclassical’ was, perhaps, the most appropriate word for any movement to come out of the Enlightenment, as it “was a new revival of Classical antiquity”(Janson, 2011) from ancient Greek culture. The artistic style recalled many of the same portrait styles, as well as subject matter that depicted history and religious tales. Neoclassical art was also concerned highly with the technical aspects of traditional painting. This preoccupation with rigid, formal technique, which was also applied to the music of this period, was reflective of the ideology of the time. The adherence to logic, math, and methods of discovery and experimentation were all done from a place of strict methods. The contrast between these periods can be attributed to Romanticism, and not merely because it happened to be the period that followed the other. Many of the artistic movements of the last 400 years in the Western world were a reaction to the the one came before it, and that reaction was largely predicated on the disappointment resulting from the previous movement. The attempt to take emotions and nature and apply logic and rationalization to them for a greater understanding of them proved to yield no significant breakthrough in society. While every movement, including the Enlightenment, had breakthroughs in art and architecture and science, the main intellectual and emotional breakthroughs it attempted to reconcile were left a mystery, and rather than attribute this to the struggle of understanding the human condition being so difficult, the central methodology of neoclassicism was blamed. Natural human emotional response, which Neoclassicism deemed irrational and useful in the progression of intellectual and artistic endeavors, was embraced as the answer to the failings on the Enlightenment. Romanticism focused on the struggles of the new social hierarchy being established. The Industrial Revolution provided entirely new economies for developed nations, and with this the attraction to city life. The urban growth, which led to urban congestion and the development of the modern city, led to new types of class distinctions and segregations. New cities exuded environments which felt as mechanical as they looked and people, just as with modern affluent cities, began to become more disconnected from one another in spite of how close together they became. This motivated Romantic art to become concerned with a return to nature. Landscapes became more prevalent, as did depictions of God. The period was meant to “celebrate the individual and subjective rather than the universal and the objective” (Stokstad, 2011). These types of paintings were meant to show a reconnection to god and nature, which had been abandoned by many during the Enlightenment for growing urban areas and science. Idealized love became a central part of the movement as well, which was considered the epitome of emotion is diametrically in opposition to logic. Even politics could be romanticised, as Jacques-Louis David’s Death of Marat (Lawall, 2006) portrayed a tragic and romantic image of the French revolutionary Jean-Paul Marat after he was assassinated in his bathtub. Retrospectively, what was to come next was almost too comical not to be predicted. Romanticism turns out to be just as binary a method of thinking as anything else. The extremes of Romanticism turn out to be just as disappointing and stifling as the extremes in Neoclassicism, just with a different set of prejudices. In approximately 1850, the Realism movement began to emerge in France before spreading throughout the rest of the Western world. This style was a reaction against the techniques of Romanticism that became expressive to the point of hyperbolic. The technique is Romanticism was a preoccupation with returning to a more traditional approach to painting, similar to that of Neoclassicism. However, Neoclassicism had its own kind of hyperbole, and Realism eschewed this by making the subject matter more reflective of everyday life. In lieu of Neoclassical depictions of great kings or Romanticism’s sweeping, bright fields, Realism would often showcase the working class. People picking crops in fields or workers constructing homes would show both the reality of everyday life with all its lack of glory, as well as begin to draw attention to the growing class distinction between the lower class and the blossoming bourgeois middle class who were interested in serving the needs of the upper class, in hopes of one day becoming one of them.
Neoclassicism and Romanticism are crucial periods in art history, as they were both periods where the artistic style was chosen out of a grander socio-political climate. No single school of thought or political allegiance dictated the social condition, and all of these factors played into both the conscious and subconscious influences of these two movements. They were, subsequently, of particular importance to people. It did not stop at merely at the consequence of a single field. These movements were driven by such intense social passions that they are considered movements in the truest sense of the word. This is why their potency, individually as well as in contrast, is so intricate. The power of one movement is necessarily built on another, and a movement driven by such passion is only ever likely to change and evolve due to the discontent that a newer generation may have in it. Romanticism reacted against Neoclassicism with fervor, just as many movements to come would against something else. The passion and intensity that drove these periods are certainly the same motivators that have left history with a wealth of talent from them, of which much of the art has stood the test of time.

Janson, H. (2011).Janson's history of art: the western tradition (8th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Lawall, S. N. (2006). The Norton anthology of Western literature (8th ed.). New York: W.W. Norton.

Stokstad, M. (2011). Art history (4th ed.). Boston: Prentice Hall.