What is the meaning of Rococo? Concept, Definition of Rococo

Definition of Rococo

1 Meaning of Rococo

It is known under the name of Rococo artistic style that reigned in some countries of Europe in the 18th century, just before the old regime fell under the revolutionary pressure. The Rococo was a clear representative of the luxurious and opulent life of European royalty not only because it was present in all artistic expressions, but because he himself, with his recharge of details and curved embodied the desire of the wealthy classes show its power and its importance above other social groups.
The Rococo was especially prolific in France, country in which had excellent diffusion to be recognized as an extremely refined, delicate and luxurious style. For many specialists, the Rococo was a somewhat more superficial evolution of the Baroque style in which the recharge of details and elements was already present. It was the rococo style that would lead to the maximum extent the idea of recharging, and attention to detail making this visible in paintings, sculptures, architectural designs and even music. At the same time, during the period of wider dissemination of the Rococo (approximately between 1730 and 1780), build furniture and interior decoration, both phenomena that knew very well benefit from the assumptions of the style in question.
Para el Rococó era esencial la vuelta a la naturaleza, pero no una naturaleza desenfrenada y extremadamente sufriente (como la que podía representar en algunos casos el Barroco), sino a una naturaleza ahora delicada, suave y lujosa, en perfecta sincronización con la presencia humana. Tal es así que gran parte de las representaciones arquitectónicas y mobiliarias incluían numerosos detalles que eran copias de las formas de hojas o de plantas, con todas sus curvas y contracurvas. En muchos sentidos, la recarga decorativa sobre las estructuras arquitectónicas avanzó de tal modo que lo que importaba no era ya la construcción si no el modo en que esta fuera decorada posteriormente.
Tanto la pintura como la arquitectura, la decoración y el mobiliario serían entonces claros representantes de un estilo de vida relajado, deseoso de acceder al lujo y de estar en contacto con la naturaleza, el gozo y la diversión. Entre los artistas más importantes y representativos del Rococó encontramos a Watteau, Fragonard, Boucher, Chardin o Gainsborough. Una de las construcciones más significativas para el Rococó es sin duda alguna el impresionante Palacio de Versailles en Francia.

2. Definición de Rococó

The word rococo was taken by the French, from vulgar latin "rocca" as "roc" with the meaning of rock and there arose "rocaille" to designate disparagingly by critics, the decorations made with this material of shells and stones, which gave him the artistic expressions irregularly.
The rococo was an individualist and refined, Variant style of the Baroque, which emerged in the 18th century, especially during the reign of French Luis XV, who ruled between 1715 and 1774, with the influence of madame de Pompadour, one of his most famous lovers.
Like the Baroque, rococo presents freedom of forms, in their most intricate, luxury, movement, and ornamentation, but the rococo motifs are more delicate, smaller and less ornate. The colors are bright and clear. While the Baroque is limited to be the art of the absolutist King Luis XIV, rococo is more social, reaching to the bourgeoisie and transcending the courtly life.
The themes are very religious, because most refers to the life in the Court, naked, and pastoral and gallant, scenes, themes are own humanism, everyday life and nature.
While the exterior of the buildings was simple, with the circular and forms with large Windows; the interior was decorated in a subtle way, but sumptuous. This trend was also reflected in the clothing, hairstyles, furniture, carriages and boats, and expanded to other countries, like Germany, where also encompassed the religious. He was replaced by the neoclassical style around the year 1770.

3 Concept of Rococo

The Rococo is an artistic movement born in France, which takes place progressively between about 1730 and 1760.
The rococo is defined as an individualistic, antiformalista and courtly art. It is characterized by the taste by the light colors, soft and clear. Predominant shapes inspired in nature, mythology, the beauty of the naked bodies, oriental art and especially in the gallant and loving subjects. It is a basically mundane art, without religious influences, which addresses issues of everyday life and human relations, a style that seeks to reflect that which is pleasing, refined, exotic and sensual.
According to Étienne-Jean Delécluze, «rococo» term was invented around the year 1797 as a joke by Pierre-Maurice Quays, pupil of Jacques-Louis David. Supposedly would be an Association of the French words "rocaille" and "baroque" (Baroque), the first of which designates an ornamentation that mimics natural stones and some curved shapes of shells and shellfish. The term rococo had a pejorative sense, for a long time before being accepted in the mid-nineteenth century as a term of art history.
His precedent is located at the beginning of the 18th century, coinciding with the Regency of Felipe de Orleans, when they began timid changes announcing the end of the style TLP and its evolution towards the expression of a taste more contemporary, independent and hedonistic, opposed to the reign of Luis XIV official, inflexible and ostentatious art. The transition from the rococo, also known as the "Luis XV style", new forms and artistic expressions began to 1720.
This style, called at the time «of the modern taste», was despised by his critics and detractors neoclasicistas with the rococo Word, which is a composition of "rocaille" (stone) and «coquille» (sea shell), since appearing in the first designs of the new style irregular shapes inspired by marine rocks, algae and shells. Other versions look for origin in rocaille, a type of ornamentation of the decorators of caves of the baroque gardens and that was distinguished by its heavy crimping. Although the Rococo was an acrílíco and courtly art, it is an example of how art is expression of social life and style can be addressed to individuals within that society, and not to their kings or gods.
The style is expressed primarily in painting, decoration, furniture, fashion and design and production of objects. His presence in the architecture and sculpture is smaller, since its key area are the interiors and, to a lesser extent, monumental compositions.
The excavations between 1738 and 1748 of Pompeii and Herculaneum and its disclosure sparked a real fascination for the 'taste Greek», embryo that, once established, would know as neoclassicism and that coincides with the reign of Luis XVI. During this period the rococo remained a great hegemony over others.