Romanticism: an expression of a romantic temperament, or the product of that temperament, in the history of art and of philosophy (and in other fields).
Some of the qualities and characteristics associated with romanticism:
1. a stress on immediate sensation and the intense feelings aroused by nature and by events in it.
2. a tendency to personify nature (Mother Earth, World Spirit) and to identify emotionally with its process and forces.
3. an emphasis on the uniqueness, the importance, and ultimate sacredness of the individual and his or her own powers.
4. a distaste for the orderly, rational, intellectual, and moderate. A lust for spontaneity, disorder, variety, unpredictability, uncertainty, rebellion, the wild, the fanciful, the extravagant, the strange, the atypical, the novel, and the eccentric.
5. a drive for freedom: freedom from restraint as an individual and as an artist, freedom of the artist to treat his or her subject matter as openly, honestly, and candidly as desired, freedom to rebel against anything an artist regards as a suffocating hold of the past. Contrasted with Classicism.
Classicism: an expression of a temperament, or the product of that temperament, that is based on a desire for order, harmony, proportion, moderation, and perfection derived from the application of reason and intelligence directing emotion and feeling.
| Last Updated: 10/19/22 |