Art involves the proper arrangement of components in a manner that appeals to the emotions and senses. The entire process or result of art entails a varied range of creations, activities of human and expression styles including literature and music. The two styles of art that can be outlined according to their time and stylistic content are; Neo-classical art and Romantic art. According to Kroll, Neo-classical premises shifted to Romantic ones in 1789 with differences in style approaches. Therefore this paper explains how Romantic art differs from Neo-classical art.
Romantic art is a composite style of art that spans its origin from American and European society. According to MSN Encarta, Romantic art such as paintings is normally portrayed as visionary and imaginative having some emotional feelings as opposed to Neo-classic art which posses a single style or attitude. Although Romantic art is deemed as dealing with things that are “romantic”, it has very little to do with love and romantic relationships because this subject is only applied occasionally. Whereas Neo-classical art is deemed as tranquil and confined in emotion and very open and complete in its expression, Romantic art strategically attempts to depict by implication states sensation too intense, elusive, or even mystical to be defined literally. Thus MSN Encarta notes that the romantics displayed their love of nature in their choice of theme, mainly the mystifying aspects of nature which are likely to probe the wonders or passions in humans.
In its affinity to nature, Romantic art visualizes the unattainable power, beyond the limits of social anticipations and human adaptability; it is dynamic, active, rather than passive strength, with a lot of functions – making images be the main faculty of creating art. On the other hand, Neo-classical art is seen as a style of art and design that will try as it is humanly possible to adapt man to his society and reconstruct that society into an ample environmental setting for the man (The Oxford Dictionary of Art). The Oxford Dictionary of Art asserts that the Neo-classical artist accepts the situations where he has no control, while the Romantic artist presents himself against the unreceptive environment and does not agree with it even if the goals are reached. Therefore, both Romantic art and Neo-classical art embrace the notion of nobleness, virtue, grandeur, and superiority but with structured differences as explained; because Neo-classical art preceded Romantic art. Romanticism primarily redefined how people have come to visualize and perceive themselves in the world because of its imaginative and emotional nature.
In essence, compared to Neoclassicism, Romanticism is seen as representing the mind’s attitude rather than a set of certain traits in styles and thus entails the expression of an idea that seems to possess a verbal origin as opposed to a visual one. Romantic art offers itself simply to expression through literature and music as opposed to the visual arts, as the logic of the immeasurable and the transcendental, of forces that go beyond reason, must simply be suggestive, as it must be in the painting and even importantly in sculpture (The Oxford Dictionary of Art). Kroll outlines the other ways in which these two artistic styles differ; – Romantic art is essentially serious, defies ordinary probability, changes the meaning of classical precedent as a myth of origin, and is skeptical about ordinary alienated human language. On the contrary, Neo-Classical art uses satire, relies on probability, uses classical precedent, and is skeptical about language.
Works Cited
Kroll, Richard. Generalizations about Neoclassical and Romantic Periods. 2009. Web.
The Oxford Dictionary of Art. Romanticism. 2009. Web.
MSN Encarta. Romanticism. 2009. Web.