RomaB-Visual+Art+and+Music

[by: Almarie Lambert]
 * Art and Music in the Romantic era**

Romanticism encompassed a period of time [from about 1820 to 1900] where people tended to criticize scientific endeavors in favor of a more idealistic, surreal, and 'romantic' way of life. Arts and music supported the people's new trend of thinking. Visual arts transformed from the previously realistic styles of [|Baroque] and [|Neoclassical] to the idealistic ways of Romanticism. Artists focussed on portraying intense emotions rather than perfecting the proportions of the human body. Artwork from this time period also tended to be less detailed, as artists moved away from the perfectly-planned brushstrokes of the Renaissance towards the spontaneous ones that would eventually lead to Monet's Impressionistic lilies.

This painting is //The Third of May, 1808// by [|Francisco Goya]. It depicts the French shooting Spaniards during a Spanish uprising. Goya primarily utilized color and value to show contrast between the French and the Spanish. As you can see, Goya's usage of brighter colors and less value makes the person with his arms raised the focal point of this image. Some art scholars claim that this man's position [arms up, protecting his fellow citizens] is supposed to portray Holiness. Goya's career lasted his whole lifetime; as he grew older he developed an extreme pessimism toward aging, and conveyed this through a series of murals on the walls of his house in Madrid. These murals were known as the Black Paintings for their disturbing subject matter.



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This painting fully captures Goya's state of mind while he worked on the Black Paintings. It is based off of the Greek myth where Saturn eats all of his kids after hearing a prophecy that one of them will try to kill him in order to become King.======

//The Nightmare// marks the beginning of the Romantic era of art. The subject of this artwork is debatable; the sleeping woman, the demonic incubus, and the horse with phosphorescent eyes are all valid candidates. However, the true meaning in the work is derived from the confusion Fuseli creates. Romantic artists were more concerned with human psychology [like dreams and nightmares-- as we can see here] than objective reality.

Romantic Era Music

Contrary to popular belief, the three "Romantic Composers," Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven, were not actually part of the Romantic movement. They were rather classical composers. The real [|romantic musicians]were: Schumann, Chopin, Richard Wagner, Paganini, Lizst and Thalberg. All of these artists were inspired by emotion and the romantic cult of the free-- which was a movement towards middle-class individualism-- to write their songs. [|Paginini] and Lizst introduced the concert tour to the world in the mid-nineteenth century. Modern artists have since improved and tweaked the concert tour tactic to gain fans and spread their music around the world. Concert tours were popular to middle and upper-class Europeans because they enabled persons of various economic standing to attend the concert. Paginini and Lizst revolutionized the music industry with their work and their concert tours.



Sources:

Novotny, Fritz, //Painting and Sculpture in Europe, 1780-1880//, 1971. (2nd edition 1980)

Marcel, Brion (1966). //Art of the Romantic Era//. Henry Holt & Company, Inc. ISBN 0275420906

Tekiner, Deniz, //Modern Art and the Romantic Vision//, (University Press of America) 2000.