18^th CENTURY STYLES

-Relative political calm allows for favorable productivity in Arts

-Ideas of human liberty and freedom seems to follow naturally from baroque Rationalism

A review of Plato: appearances vs. reality; The Myth of the Cave

David Hume: challenges the certainty of human knowledge.

-empiricism leads to skepticism

- argues that causation is equivalent to a psychological perception that two events follow one another.

-***implication: order is in the mind and not in the matter

-we cannot know with certainty the outside world; we can only predict

Immanuel Kant: Humans’ ability to use Reason makes us able to get us beyond this world of appearances.

Kant, "What is Enlightenment?"

• "Have courage to use your own reason!" is the motto of enlightenment
• There are few who have ventured to use their own reason
• Why?
• Political leaders (and other authorities) answer questions quickly, make it easy to depend on them (Cf. "What is Enlightenment", para 6)
• "After the guardians have first made their domestic cattle dumb and have made sure that these placid creatures will not dare take a single step without [them]…the guardians then show them the danger which threatens if they try to go alone."
• Saddam Hussein?

• Kant: with freedom, those with rational appreciation will spread the good news
• Complete religious freedom; prince must "prescribe nothing in religious matters"

Do we need God to have morality?

Kant’s answer: humans legislate the moral law

-***Political implication: humans as able to transcend (i.e., go beyond world of appearances) and as able to legislate moral law deserve respect and freedom.

Hobbes (1651) The Leviathan

-the monarch is the sovereign agreed upon by subjects who would otherwise pursue self-interest to everyone’s detriment.

-Without a sovereign to keep subjects in line, life would be "nasty, poor, brutish, and short."

John Locke (1690)

-humans are equal and free; they have the right to dissolve government

What are the duties of government?

-government has duty to keep the peace, AND provide certain "safety net" services (e.g., unemployment insurance, healthcare, etc.)

-government has duty to keep the peace, AND to be as hands-off as possible with respect to other things

Adam Smith: The foremost proponent of "hands-off" laissez faire capitalism

-government should at least provide education

-A stylistic reaction to the style of Louis XIV

-compare Hyacinthe Rigaud, Louis XIV with Antoine Watteau, L’indifferent

-but reactions are not always opposites!

-Rococo is generally understood to be an interior style

-fr. rocaille means "rock" or "shell" widely used as interior decoration materials

-rococo is better suited for fashionable townhouse than palace hall, but it is used in both

Antoine Watteau

-Music Party (Fig. 16.7)

-dimensions of painting (68.6 x 90.5 cm)

-brings social frivolity to level of great art

Francois Boucher

-Toilet of Venus

-robust love becomes subtle flirtation

Jean Honore Fragonard

-The Swing

-young aristocrat hides in shrubbery

Elisabeth Vigee-Lebrun

-Self Portrait

-painter was much in demand by aristocrats

-middle class cannot connect with rococo

1) Storm and Stress

-reaction to Enlightenment rationalism

Goethe: nature, emotion provide keys to understanding and not reason.

Henri Fuseli- Swiss born Storm and Stress artist

-The Nightmare (1781)

-The Blinded Polyphemus…(1803)

2. Religious Reaction

Edwards, "Sinners in the Hands of an angry God"

Images of damnation

Calvinist doctrine

-compare with Gislebertus (Ch. 6)

3) Sculptural Reaction

Mozart

-Don Giovanni

18^th Century Rationalism