Humanities Study Guide

Humanities Study Guide

8.2 Social Unrest The middle class was expanding in the Enlightenment era and becoming increasingly resentful of the nobility. Subsequently, the feeling of inequality sparked a revolution within the Middle class, as they demanded art be more reflective of their attitudes and tastes. German philosopher G.W.F Hegel was an idealist who believed that reality was grounded in the mind's workings. He argued that the essential powers of the mind were always active in the world. In his opinion, our minds are engaged with actuality, which in turn shapes the concrete reality we live in. He believed that the historical fact of revolution reflected the needs of the mind. Karl Marx presented his ideas about the world that were very different from Hegel's. He argued instead that history was propelled by material forces and by the people controlling those resources. He believed that social classes were broken into laborers and the people who benefited from that labor. Marx theorized that the laborers would eventually overthrow the government and the capitalist elite to create a socialist society. This society would have everyone sharing in production equally and collectively. 8.3 The Arts Painting Rococo style, which was defined by an intimate scale; soft colors and shapes; natural and light- hearted feelings; a sense of playful and unusual themes, originated in France. Culture thrived in Paris' salons, where weekly social gatherings featured dining and entertainment. There was plenty of conversation that was usually sponsored by wealthy Parisian women. Painters, such as French Antoine Watteau, were prominent artists of the time. His paintings focused on fashionable aristocrats in costumes and the use of pastel crayons. Instead of the grand nature of the Baroque period, the Rococo style was more peaceful and dreamy. Alternatively, Germany created its own version of the Paris Salon called the German Coffee House, which became a scene for conversation, social criticism, and political discussion. Jean-Baptiste Greuze was a bourgeois painter whose famous painting, The Bride of the Village, symbolizes the kinds of pictures embraced by the bourgeois society. It contrasts the elegant but frivolous Rococo. The bourgeois preferred works that had sobriety and sentiment. This style explicitly imitated the art of ancient Greece and Rome and condemned the "feeble softness and capricious excesses" of the Rococo period. These versatile works, which imposed universal and ethical principles, were abstract and moral. Neoclassical painters pioneered a "grand style" of portraiture that often showed subjects among antique statues resembling ancient mythologies. Painters of the time, like Angelica Kauffman, tried to imitate the "authentic" models of the past.

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