Classicism

For the branch of study in the humanities, see Classics.

Classicism, in the arts, refers generally to a high regard
for a classical period, classical antiquity in the Western
tradition, as setting standards for taste which the classicists seek to emulate. The art of classicism typically seeks
to be formal and restrained: of the Discobolus Sir Kenneth Clark observed, if we object to his restraint and
compression we are simply objecting to the classicism
of classic art. A violent emphasis or a sudden acceleration of rhythmic movement would have destroyed those
qualities of balance and completeness through which it retained until the present century its position of authority in
the restricted repertoire of visual images.[1] Classicism,
as Clark noted, implies a canon of widely accepted ideal
forms, whether in the Western canon that he was examining in The Nude (1956), or the literary Chinese classics
or Chinese art, where the revival of classic styles is also
recurring feature.
Classicism is a force which is often present in postmedieval European and European inuenced traditions;
however, some periods felt themselves more connected
to the classical ideals than others, particularly the Age of
Enlightenment.
Fountain of the Four Rivers, Bernini, 1651.

The classicism of the Renaissance led to, and gave way to,
a dierent sense of what was classical in the 16th and
17th centuries. In this period classicism took on more
overtly structural overtones of orderliness, predictability,
the use of geometry and grids, the importance of rigorous discipline and pedagogy, as well as the formation of
schools of art and music. The court of Louis XIV was
seen as the center of this form of classicism, with its references to the gods of Olympus as a symbolic prop for
absolutism, its adherence to axiomatic and deductive reasoning, and its love of order and predictability.

General term

Classicism is a specic genre of philosophy, expressing

itself in literature, architecture, art, and music, which
has Ancient Greek and Roman sources and an emphasis on society. It was particularly expressed in the
Neoclassicism of the Age of Enlightenment.
Classicism was a recurrent tendency in the Late Antique period, and had a major revival in Carolingian and
Ottonian art. There was another, more durable revival
in the Italian renaissance when the fall of Byzantium and
rising trade with the Islamic cultures brought a ood of
knowledge about, and from, the antiquity of Europe. Until that time the identication with antiquity had been seen
as a continuous history of Christendom from the conversion of Roman Emperor Constantine I. Renaissance
classicism introduced a host of elements into European
culture, including the application of mathematics and
empiricism into art, humanism, literary and depictive
realism, and formalism. Importantly it also introduced
Polytheism, or "paganism", and the juxtaposition of ancient and modern.

This period sought the revival of classical art forms, including Greek drama and music. Opera, in its modern
European form, had its roots in attempts to recreate the
combination of singing and dancing with theatre thought
to be the Greek norm. Examples of this appeal to classicism included Dante, Petrarch, and Shakespeare in poetry
and theatre. Tudor drama, in particular, modeled itself
after classical ideals and divided works into Tragedy and
Comedy. Studying Ancient Greek became regarded as
essential for a well-rounded education in the liberal arts.
The Renaissance also explicitly returned to architectural
models and techniques associated with Greek and Roman
1

IN THE THEATRE

orous categories in artistic elds. Various movements of

the romantic period saw themselves as classical revolts
against a prevailing trend of emotionalism and irregularity, for example the Pre-Raphaelites. By this point classicism was old enough that previous classical movements
received revivals; for example, the Renaissance was seen
as a means to combine the organic medieval with the orderly classical. The 19th century continued or extended
many classical programs in the sciences, most notably the
Newtonian program to account for the movement of energy between bodies by means of exchange of mechanical
and thermal energy.
The 20th century saw a number of changes in the arts
and sciences. Classicism was used both by those who rejected, or saw as temporary, transgurations in the political, scientic, and social world and by those who embraced the changes as a means to overthrow the perceived
weight of the 19th century. Thus, both pre-20th century
disciplines were labelled classical and modern movements in art which saw themselves as aligned with light,
space, sparseness of texture, and formal coherence.
In the present day philosophy classicism is used as a
term particularly in relation to Apollonian over Dionysian
impulses in society and art; that is a preference for
rationality, or at least rationally guided catharsis, over
emotionalism.

2 In the theatre
Classicist door in Olomouc, The Czech Republic.

antiquity, including the golden rectangle as a key proportion for buildings, the classical orders of columns, as well
as a host of ornament and detail associated with Greek
and Roman architecture. They also began reviving plastic arts such as bronze casting for sculpture, and used
the classical naturalism as the foundation of drawing,
painting and sculpture.
The Age of Enlightenment identied itself with a vision
of antiquity which, while continuous with the classicism
of the previous century, was shaken by the physics of Sir
Isaac Newton, the improvements in machinery and measurement, and a sense of liberation which they saw as being present in the Greek civilization, particularly in its
struggles against the Persian Empire. The ornate, organic,
and complexly integrated forms of the baroque were to
give way to a series of movements that regarded themselves expressly as classical or neo-classical, or would
rapidly be labelled as such. For example the painting of
Jacques-Louis David which was seen as an attempt to return to formal balance, clarity, manliness, and vigor in
art.
The 19th century saw the classical age as being the pre- Molire in classical dress, by Nicolas Mignard, 1658.
cursor of academicism, including such movements as
uniformitarianism in the sciences, and the creation of rig- Classicism in the theatre was developed by 17th century

3
French playwrights from what they judged to be the rules
of Greek classical theatre, including the "Classical unities" of time, place and action, found in the Poetics of
Aristotle.

Battista Alberti and the work of Filippo Brunelleschi. It

places emphasis on symmetry, proportion, geometry and
the regularity of parts as they are demonstrated in the
architecture of Classical antiquity and in particular, the
architecture of Ancient Rome, of which many examples
Unity of time referred to the need for the entire ac- remained.
tion of the play to take place in a ctional 24-hour Orderly arrangements of columns, pilasters and lintels,
period
as well as the use of semicircular arches, hemispherical
domes, niches and aedicules replaced the more complex
Unity of place meant that the action should unfold
proportional systems and irregular proles of medieval
in a single location
buildings. This style quickly spread to other Italian cities
Unity of action meant that the play should be con- and then to France, Germany, England, Russia and elsestructed around a single 'plot-line', such as a tragic where.
love aair or a conict between honour and duty.
In the 16th century, Sebastiano Serlio helped codify the
classical orders and Palladio's legacy evolved into the long
Examples of classicist playwrights are Pierre Corneille, tradition of Palladian architecture. Building o of these
Jean Racine and Moliere. In the period of Romanticism, inuences, the 17th-century architects Inigo Jones and
Shakespeare, who conformed to none of the classical Christopher Wren rmly established classicism in Engrules, became the focus of French argument over them, in land.
which the Romantics eventually triumphed; Victor Hugo For the development of classicism from the mid-18thwas among the rst French playwrights to break these century onwards, see Neoclassical architecture.
conventions.
The inuence of these French rules on playwrights in
other nations is debatable. In the English theatre,
Restoration playwrights such as William Wycherly and
William Congreve would have been familiar with them.
William Shakespeare and his contemporaries did not follow this Classicist philosophy, in particular since they
were not French and also because they wrote several
decades prior to their establishment. Those of Shakespeares plays that seem to display the unities, such as The
Tempest, probably indicate a familiarity with actual models from classical antiquity.

4 In the ne arts
For Greek art of the 5th century B.C.E., see Classical
art in ancient Greece and the Severe style

Italian Renaissance painting and sculpture are marked by

their renewal of classical forms, motifs and subjects. In
the 15th century Leon Battista Alberti was important in
theorizing many of the ideas for painting that came to
a fully realised product with Raphael's School of Athens
during the High Renaissance. The themes continued
largely unbroken into the 17th century, when artists such
as Nicolas Poussin and Charles Le Brun represented of
3 In architecture
the more rigid classicism. Like Italian classicizing ideas
in the 15th and 16th centuries, it spread through Europe
Main articles: Classical architecture and Outline of clasin the mid to late 17th century.
sical architecture
Classicism in architecture developed during the Italian Later classicism in painting and sculpture from the
mid-18th and 19th centuries is generally referred to as
Neoclassicism.

5 Political philosophy
See also: Classical republicanism

6 See also
Classical tradition
Villa Rotonda, Palladio, 1591

Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns

Renaissance, notably in the writings and designs of Leon

Weimar Classicism

References

[1] Clark, The Nude: A Study in Ideal Form 1956:242

Further reading
Kallendorf, Craig (2007). A Companion to the Classical Tradition. Blackwell Publishing. Retrieved
2012-05-06. Essays by various authors on topics related to historical periods, places, and themes. Limited preview online.

External links
Renaissance & Classicism from encyclopedia

EXTERNAL LINKS

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