Hey everyone, I don’t know about you but I’m eagerly looking forward to February 15th aka Discount Chocolate Day. Since I don’t have chocolate themed arts or antiques at this moment, I guess I can be educational and put out something related to “romance” for Valentine’s Day.
Romanticism was a movement in art, literature and music that sprang into being during the 18th century and held fast through the 19th century as a popular style. The whole point of Romanticism was to challenge Enlightenment ideals. Where Enlightenment thinkers believed that rational thinking and reason would lead to freedom and progress, Romanticists believed in emotion and sense as being equally as important in understanding the world. Their subjects were often imbued with nostalgia, and as you can probably guess, glorified the past in many ways. Some Romanticist artists would paint current events inspired by the happenings of the French Revolution. Others were turning to painting plein air landscapes going against the grain of the more prevalent and widely accepted Neoclassicist subjects. These artists took great care in painting landscapes with studies of the environment and sky, while others added people to emphasize humans as part of nature.
No longer were idyllic landscapes the standard, now harsh weather and dynamic lighting graced canvas and the power of nature was able to be viewed in a single snapshot. In the United States, Romanticism became swept up in the newly found nationalism after the American Revolution. Within the U.S. artists would include local folklore, traditions, and landscapes in their works. They really knew how make a gloomy overcast day look like a scene out of a romance novel. Now I’m not here just to be educational and it’s probably my only chance to do this let’s talk about one of my favorite “romances.” One of my personal favorite artists, Oskar Kokoschka, once upon a time dated a woman named Alma Mahler who was an Austrian socialite. Anyway, she was kind of the worst and dated only the most up and coming, big name artists at the time so she went through a lot of men. She unsurprisingly grew tired of Kokoschka, broke up with him, and left him for none other than Walter Gropius. That marriage also didn’t last so don’t be too surprised now. This left Kokoschka miserable, so he lived up to his nickname of “Public Terror,” which is less of a nickname and more of a very accurate description and did what any sane man would do. He made a life size doll in the likeness of Alma. Did he bring the doll to events and treat it like a real person? Yes, he did. So let that sink in and enjoy! Make sure you stock up on that discount candy, hope Kokoschka didn’t ruin your appetite!
