Opinion of Romanticism

[Snowstalker Mk. II]

A cancer.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

A necessary and valuable reaction to the enlightenment.  Of course, like any philosophy, it can and has been taken to excess.  Still, overall it has been more beneficial than harmful.

[Randy Bobandy]

Freedom movement.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Not a fan, Enlightenment is more of my kind of thing.

[MASHED POTATOES. VOTE!]

I'm not a fan either, especially of the Polish "messianic" version.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

A necessary corrective to the faintly puerile excesses of Enlightenment thought, the progenitor of many excellent artistic and literary movements, and more important to the early development of socialism than it is often given credit for, although the potential and in some cases actual problems are obvious.

[afleitch]

A necessary corrective to the faintly puerile excesses of Enlightenment thought, the progenitor of many excellent artistic and literary movements, and more important to the early development of socialism than it is often given credit for, although the potential and in some cases actual problems are obvious.

Certainly that is true, though socialism-as-writ was completely at odds with romanticism when it became a force at the turn of the last century. Romanticism did however provide a perfect framework for some of the most odious forms of early to mid 20th century nationalism.

[Atlas Has Shrugged]

Art is one of the few outlets where emotion should be set completely free. Freedom movement.

[H. Ross Peron]

Not a fan, Enlightenment is more of my kind of thing.

And 19th Century Realism/Naturalism

[Cassius]

Mixed. A lot of good art came out of the movement, and I do sympathise somewhat with their rejection of parts of 'enlightenment' thought. However, a lot of awful stuff grew, at least partially, out of that movement.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

A necessary corrective to the faintly puerile excesses of Enlightenment thought, the progenitor of many excellent artistic and literary movements, and more important to the early development of socialism than it is often given credit for, although the potential and in some cases actual problems are obvious.

Certainly that is true, though socialism-as-writ was completely at odds with romanticism when it became a force at the turn of the last century. Romanticism did however provide a perfect framework for some of the most odious forms of early to mid 20th century nationalism.

That's the potential and in too many cases actual problem that's most obvious, yes.

Not a fan, Enlightenment is more of my kind of thing.

And 19th Century Realism/Naturalism

Realism and Naturalism were necessary correctives to the more than faintly puerile excesses of Romantic thought.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

An extremely important artistic movement. While it's excesses are easily (and deservedly) mockable, it was responsible for a revolution in aesthetic perspective^* and was essential to the creation of Modernity and, eventually, Modernism and beyond.

Looking at it as an 'intellectual movement' is very Atlas, and not in a good way. Look at some pictures, read some poetry, or listen to some music.** And then maybe consider it in intellectual terms, but not before.

<sub>*For an example of what I mean, compare landscape paintings of the 18th and 19th century. Except that writing 'landscape paintings of the 18th century' is (I would argue) absurd. Because artists of the 18th century did not - unless they were either a bit weird or were doing so for basically functional reasons. And even in the case of the latter they often struggled - paint landscapes as we understand the term today. They painted pastoral idylls. We regard (for example) mountains as beautiful, but before Romanticism they were generally regarded as wasteland.

**Though as music is a fundamentally abstract art form, Romanticism-as-a-dominant-tendency lasted way longer: up until the breaching of tonality in the early 20th century.</sub>

[Storebought]

The OP and afleitch are entirely correct. The irrationality, reaction, and deep evil bound up within the Romantic movement isn't mitigated by a few gushing tone poems or program symphonies.

[afleitch]

An extremely important artistic movement. While it's excesses are easily (and deservedly) mockable, it was responsible for a revolution in aesthetic perspective^* and was essential to the creation of Modernity and, eventually, Modernism and beyond.

I agree that as a movement perhaps we shouldn’t be talking about it in Atlas terms. Absolutely.

I do have to disagree a little with your interpretation of what Romanticism ‘opened’ up. Landscape has always been well captured by skilled painters (and once again we have to ignore outside of Europe when talking about this) and certainly became a more prominent form of artistic expression in protestant Europe with the thankful demise of iconography which had been the de jure art form since the Byzantine era (‘Oh look, another Madonna and Child’). In iconographic works, the iconography was the landscape and so expression was best demonstrated by filling non central areas with other people; by bystanders, animals. Normalcy.

With that constraint gone, landscape painting developed. The Dutch were expertly skilled at it and influenced most of the rest of Europe. If anything, landscape became universal. It didn’t truly breathe because the legacy of icons, common bystanders, pastoral clichés and demonstrating stills of perspective through peppering it with classical artifacts still remained. However clean styles did develop. Romanticism took that as an inspiration but ended up laying down borders encouraging ‘national’ schools and styles of art which then fed back into nationalistic expression. And much of that expression, for want of a better word - was ‘tat.’ For every Friedrich there was Constable. From a Scottish perspective Romanticism in a cultural level was a British (read English) re-interpretation of what Scotland should be; Walter Scott, Balmoral and so on. It’s still at times inescapable. Landscape painting wasn’t really afforded breathing space until the Impressionist era; less is more.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

With that constraint gone, landscape painting developed. The Dutch were expertly skilled at it and influenced most of the rest of Europe.

But (with a couple of very interesting exceptions) we are talking about pastoral paintings here. Often very good ones (or at least better than the dire stuff churned out in the 18th century. It is difficult to emphasise enough quite how bad most 18th century art is) but an idealised representation of well-settled countryside all the same. And certainly not immune from what would later be called nationalism (particularly in the case of Dutch artists).

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Ah, but I never said that all Romanticism was good

My point is that there was a major change in aesthetic perspective beginning at around about the beginning of the 19th century, and that the catalyst for this change was pretty clearly the Romantic movement. It's the movement's main legacy. An interesting feature of that change, incidentally, is that many of the consequences of it weren't properly felt until after Romanticism basically petered out in most fields after 1848.

Including, of course, landscape painting.

[traininthedistance]

Concur with Sibboleth 100 percent here.  Romanticism was primarily an artistic movement rather than an intellectual one, and should be judged as such, and was largely a positive development as such (though a lot of its extra-intellectual trappings are certainly problematic and worthy of scorn).

[Storebought]

Concur with Sibboleth 100 percent here.  Romanticism was primarily an artistic movement rather than an intellectual one, and should be judged as such, and was largely a positive development as such (though a lot of its extra-intellectual trappings are certainly problematic and worthy of scorn).

The Romantic movement began as a philosophical enterprise that the poets and novelists
expounded on. In a simple way, Romanticism was the German intellectual reaction against French neoclassicism -- and what a reaction it was...

[Tetro Kornbluth]

This discussion - which is interesting, btw, keep it up - reminds me that one of the strangest and perhaps most significant intellectual developments of romanticism was the founding and extension of linguistics - following the discoveries of Jones (i.e. the discovery of Indo-European) in the middle of the eighteenth century -  and the equation (that still haunts a lot of intellectual discourse) between an idea of language and the idea of the self-expression of a group, that language and culture are somewhat equatable.

I'm looking forward to the "Opinion of Postmodernism" thread .

[afleitch]

I'm looking forward to the "Opinion of Postmodernism" thread .

Please no. The Mikado might come back and bore me to death about Foucault.

[Insula Dei]

Surely the term is a bit vague and unwieldy for the purposes of this sort of thread? Do you mean Wordsworth and Shelley or Fichte and Hegel or Hugo and Chateaubriand?

[All Along The Watchtower]

Surely the term is a bit vague and unwieldy for the purposes of this sort of thread? Do you mean Wordsworth and Shelley or Fichte and Hegel or Hugo and Chateaubriand?

Hey belgiansocialist, didn't know you were back! Good to see you!

[Del Tachi]

Massive freedom movement.