Romanticism

by Hugh Honour

Book Overview

This book discusses romanticism as an historical phenomenon, not as a state of mind found in all periods and cultures. It is an erudite thematic study that exerts upon Western culture and particularly the visual arts.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0064300897
• ISBN13: 9780064300896
• Release Date: July 1979
• Publisher: Routledge
• Length: 416 Pages
• Weight: 1.46 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.0" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

A brilliant and thoughtful essay!

Paul Valery was quite conscious about it when stated: "Our best thoughts are those which are not attached respect our feelings." As a matter of fact, one of the most revealing features of any masterwork around any artistic discipline resides precisely in its intrinsic multidimensionality. One may asks oneself for instance, How many times before the Guernica was painted? Or How many others writers before him were not capable to bring us so close to the impotence and the existential despair that covers Kafka's Process? Another emblematic case we should consider concerns to Bellini paintings, where the power of the illusion pretends to supplant the cosmic grandeur of Michelangelo. In theatre, we have two authors who express without proposing themselves these determinant dissonances: Shakespeare and Brecht. Every principal character of the greatest tragedies from the "bard" is emblematic by itself because their perversity and level of evilness is hardly to find around us. You may cite certain coincidental profiles around tyrants and villains who have exhibited the political power as an extension of them, but that's all. On the contrary, Brecht's personages are almost a radiography of many dictators or oppressors of the freewill as George Orwell will express so well in 1984 two decades before. The terms "condescendence" and "self indulgence" are typical of a sickened and narcissist existential attitude of a decadent artist. Every new artistic tendency originates by definition, the suppression and destruction of the previous one. But when the Romanticism was born, the world was experiencing a colossal change that directly inflamed the creative wills around the world like a volcano in plain eruption. In this sense the appearing of the nationalisms established a visible twist of fate in this tendency. So the ideas that nurtured its reason of existence were not abolished, but prolonged. The ideal personal became hymn of crowds. And for the first time in the history, the symphonic poems and musical overtures based on historical facts were genially expressed by Beethoven, Schumann, Liszt, Prokoviev and Sibelius). And how the next vintage of composers were well aware many people felt identified in those little operas, operettas. This turning point distorted the initial goal, due we were at the eve of the satirical vision and visible vulgarization of many irrelevant events where the irrelevancy and innate frivolity dislocated the best intentions. This author has proposed the best text until this date in order to carve in relief the minimum facets of this movement of invaluable transcendence until these days.

A classic reading

The idea of Romanticism in art is a dificult task. To define and understand the movement that started at the end of the XVIIIth century needs a wide knowledge not only of art, but also of history, politics and, in fact the whole time when Romantic artists lived. This is probably one of the best essays written about the subject. Honour makes a great effort to display the variety of Romantic art, and artists, because their individuality was strong and powerful. But also explaining the great rupture with what art has been before it. The constant fight between academies and those new free-lancer is explained here accurately.Making this book not only interesting for those who are interested in art alone, but to anyone who would like a good written book.