romanticism

The neoclassicist emphases on exacting order, painstaking detail, subdued coloration, and frozen forms were abandoned. The concept of art as depiction or illustration of real-world affairs gave way to a concept of art as an external expression of inner feelings. The canvases of Delacroix, Gericault, Millet, Courbet, and others were often bold and vigorous. Lively color or strong somber hues predominated; attention to detail was replaced by an expression of emotional content. The subject matter was often heroic, sometimes based on the works of romantic poets, Dante, or Goethe. The mysterious, fantastic, and morbid became familiar themes; pathos and tragedy were often celebrated.

Of special interest in much romanticist art is the creation of what might be termed a presence of the absent. As we saw, the romantic discourse of self created a sense of reality beyond immediate, sensory awareness; the unseen, inner depths were most substantial. Convinced of the reality and significance of these unseen resources, the artist was faced with the problem of conveying them through a visual medium. How can one use purely sensory devices to portray the reality of something beyond the sense?

The solution took many different forms. In England, J.M.W. Turner’s canvases placed the viewer in the midst of turbulent mists or vapors. What is empty space for most artists became palpable substance in Turner's hands. Further, one sensed that something laid beyond the vapors—perhaps the sun, or a fire, or mystical beings froth other lands. “The beyond” was thus the central subject matter of the paintings, but precisely what laid beyond was difficult to articulate.

Other painters used different means to create the presence of the absent. The Pre-Raphaelite and symbolists often painted realistic pictures of mythical characters, thus transforming myth into reality. The German painter Casper David Friedrich often included figures looking off into the distance, or painted landscapes in which the viewer’s eyes were directed toward a distant point itself not visible. One sensed “the beyond” but could never grasp its essence.

In Norway, Edvard Munch sustained the romantic tradition in his faces contorted by anxiety and anguish from an internal wellspring far removed.

Music paralleled the visual arts. In many respects the music of both the baroque and early classical periods complemented the Enlightenment emphasis on powers of reason. Much has been written about the rational heuristics underlying the scores of Bach and Mozart. With such composers as Beethoven and Schubert, however, the emphasis shifts toward the world of deep emotion. For Beethoven music was ideally an expression of feeling. (The Moonlight Sonata was dedicated to his “immortal beloved.”) This view of music as an external expression of inner profundity came to dominate the scores of Brahms, Schumann, Mendelssohn, Verdi, and Chopin. But romanticism reached its zenith in the works of Richard Wagner. Not only did feasts of emotion inspire his works (Tristan and Isolde was written in anguish over his unrequited love for the wife of a rich patron), but he conceived of musical passages as “careers of feeling.” The mythical and mystical were then given dramatic visual form on the operatic stage.