Download Free The Idea Of Art As Propaganda In France 1750 1799 Book in PDF and EPUB Free Download. You can read online The Idea Of Art As Propaganda In France 1750 1799 and write the review.

One of the most modern features of the French Revolution was its intention of shaping a new kind of citizen by exposing him from childhood to inspirational messages and behavioral models. In this effort to regenerate the masses the French Revolutionaries sought to employ not only schools, but newspapers, festivals, dramas, poems, songs, paintings, statues, and engravings as well. At the peak of the Terror, French leaders brough tthe West to the threshold of the totalitarian state in the fullest sense of the world: they established a single party state, directed a regimented economy, created a mass army, and sought to mobilize all the media capable of influencing the human mind. In was an interest in both art and the Revolution which led Professor Leith to explore the groth of the idea of using art as one instrument of propaganda. The idea proved to have deep roots in western civilization, going back to classical thinkers, medieval churchmen, and the art officials of such monarchs as Louis XIV. But following the hedonistic rococo art of the first half of the eighteenth century, this idea of didactic art took on a new lease of life, reaching a crescendo during the Terror. This book analyses the contribution of the philosophes, the Encyclopedists, royal officials, art critics, and revolutionary leaders to the resurgence of the idea; it also probes the peculiar psychological assumptions which led eighteeneth-century thinkers to believe in the efficacy of visual propaganda. The outcome of this idea of art as an ideological weapon was involved in the fate of the Revolution itself, yet it was also affected by certain curious tensions already evident in the minds of its advocates under the Old Régime. Lingering interest in purely aesthetic values,k affirmation of the need for creative freedom, and determination to maintain French cultural hegemony, all complicated the effort to turn art into a vehicle of civic instruction. The final chapter examines the rôle of these tensions in the dénouement of the idea in the closing phase of the Revolution. This book should appeal not only to those interested in French civilization, the age of Enlightment, and they French Revolution, but to those concerned with the rôle of art and the artist in modern society as well.
The decades following the 1973 publication of Alessandro Conti’s Storia del Restauro have seen considerable scholarly interest in the development of restoration in France in the second half of the eighteenth century. A number of technical treatises and biographies of restorers have offered insight into restoration practice. The Restoration of Paintings in Paris, 1750–1815, however, is the first book to situate this work within the broader historical and philosophical contexts of the time. Drawing on previously unpublished primary material from archives in Paris, Berlin, Rome, and Venice, Noémie Étienne combines art history with anthropology and sociology to survey the waning decades of the Ancien Régime and early post– Revolution France. Initial chapters present the diversity of restoration practice, encompassing not only royal institutions and the Louvre museum but also private art dealers, artists, and craftsmen, and examine questions of trade secrecy and the changing role of the restorer. Following chapters address the influence of restoration and exhibition on the aesthetic understanding of paintings as material objects. The book closes with a discussion of the institutional and political uses of restoration, along with an art historical consideration of such key concepts as authenticity, originality, and stability of artworks, emphasizing the multilayered dimension of paintings by such important artists as Titian and Raphael. There is also a useful dictionary of the main restorers active in France between 1750 and 1815.
This is the story of the forging of a national cultural institution in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Britain. The Royal Academy of Arts was the dominant art school and exhibition society in London and a model for art societies across the British Isles and North America. This is the first study of its early years, re-evaluating the Academy's significance in national cultural life and its profile in an international context. Holger Hoock reassesses royal and state patronage of the arts and explores the concepts and practices of cultural patriotism and the politicization of art during the American and French Revolutions. By demonstrating how the Academy shaped the notions of an English and British school of art and influenced the emergence of the British cultural state, he illuminates the politics of national culture and the character of British public life in an age of war, revolution, and reform.
During the French Revolution, traditional literary forms such as the sentimental novel and the moral tale dominate literary production. At first glance, it might seem that these texts are unaffected by the upheavals in France; in fact they reveal not only a surprising engagement with politics but also an internalised emotional response to the turbulence of the period. In this innovative and wide-ranging study, Katherine Astbury uses trauma theory as a way of exploring the apparent contradiction between the proliferation of non-political literary texts and the events of the Revolution. Through the narratives of established bestselling literary figures of the Ancien Regime (primarily Marmontel, Madame de Genlis and Florian), and the early works of first generation Romantics Madame de Stael and Chateaubriand, she traces how the Revolution shapes their writing, providing an intriguing new angle on cultural production of the 1790s.Katherine Astbury is Senior Lecturer in French Studies at the University of Warwick.
The 14 essays in this volume look at both the theory and practice of monarchical governments from the Thirty Years War up until the time of the French Revolution. Contributors aim to unravel the constructs of ‘absolutism’ and ‘monarchism’, examining how the power and authority of monarchs was defined through contemporary politics and philosophy.
Physiognomy - the notion that there is a relationship between character and physical appearance - is often dismissed as a marginal pseudoscience; however, The Appearance of Character argues that it is central to many disciplines and thought processes, and that it constantly adapts itself to current patterns of thought and modes of discourse. This interdisciplinary study determines the characteristics of physiognomical thought in France during the previously neglected period leading up to the reception of Johann Caspar Lavater's physiognomy in the early 1780s. It establishes a corpus of physiognomical texts, juxtaposing `mainstream' figures such as Buffon and Diderot with a host of minor writers. It then considers the representation of the passions in art, examining the legacy of Charles LeBrun, and revealing an aesthetics of facial representation where the passions are conceived in terms of multiplicity, speed, and nuance. The contribution of the Comte de Caylus to the development of the `tete d'expression' is analysed, as well as the innovations of Greuze in the field of expression. Physiognomy in portraiture is also addressed through the work of La Tour. Facial expression in painting is found to have strong parallels with contemporary acting theory and stage practice. Finally, The Appearance of Character addresses the notion of character, outlining various predominant theories, and analysing the complex relationship between character and passions. In this respect, the study has ramifications for theories of the self and individualism in the Enlightenment and beyond.
Smoothly blending performance theory, literary analysis, and historical insights, Cecilia Feilla explores the mutually dependent discourses of feeling and politics and their impact on the theatre and theatre audiences during the French Revolution. Remarkably, the most frequently performed and popular plays from 1789 to 1799 were not the political action pieces that have been the subject of much literary and historical criticism, but rather sentimental dramas and comedies, many of which originated on the stages of the Old Regime. Feilla suggests that theatre provided an important bridge from affective communities of sentimentality to active political communities of the nation, arguing that the performance of virtue on stage served to foster the passage from private emotion to public virtue and allowed groups such as women, children, and the poor who were excluded from direct political participation to imagine a new and inclusive social and political structure. Providing close readings of texts by, among others, Denis Diderot, Collot d'Herbois, and Voltaire, Feilla maps the ways in which continuities and innovations in the theatre from 1760 to 1800 set the stage for the nineteenth century. Her book revitalizes and enriches our understanding of the significance of sentimental drama, showing that it was central to the way that drama both shaped and was shaped by political culture.
This volume explores the history of the different means of communication in the West from the invention of printing to the Internet. It discusses issues from the importance of oral and manuscript communication to the development of electronic media.