How Romanticism and Photography Shaped Western Modernitymodern Essay Example
“Western modernity was shaped by cross-currents between Europe and North America in the 19th century and in the beginning of the 20th century.”
Neoclassicism was a movement which focused on the rediscovery of Ancient Greek and Roman values and style (and called Greek revival in the United States[1]). It was a defining trait of the Enlightenment age and of its reasoning-based political and artistic thinking and saw its apogee during the Napoleonic era. Starting in the 19th century, this movement was opposed by the Romantics, who ended the strict rules of neoclassicism and made the expression of their emotions and feelings the basis for their art, may it be poetry, literature, painting or music. The English romantic poet William Wordsworth called romantic poetry "the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings recollected in tranquility"[2]. Compared to the neoclassicists, romantics such as Edgar Allan Poe or Victor Hugo were “modern”. They anticipated mentality changes in the Western world. Parts of western modernity were shaped by interactions and cross currents between Europe and the United States during the 19th and 20th century. These centuries were characterised by a break from the established rules and the artistic past and were times of new technologies as well as increasing interaction between the two sides of the Northern Atlantic. Such Euro-American relations, may they be artistic, cultural and even political have never died out. To understand our Western modernity, this paper shall examine two different aspects of these artistic cross-currents. Firstly, the romantic current played an important role in all the arts, ranging from poetry to architecture. Finally, the appearance of the documentary art of photography has in many aspects shaped modernity and even later led to the invention of motion picture and cinema[3]. Firstly, the Romantic Movement that swarmed across Europe and North America starting in the 19th century helped to shape
Neoclassicism was a movement which focused on the rediscovery of Ancient Greek and Roman values and style (and called Greek revival in the United States[1]). It was a defining trait of the Enlightenment age and of its reasoning-based political and artistic thinking and saw its apogee during the Napoleonic era. Starting in the 19th century, this movement was opposed by the Romantics, who ended the strict rules of neoclassicism and made the expression of their emotions and feelings the basis for their art, may it be poetry, literature, painting or music. The English romantic poet William Wordsworth called romantic poetry "the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings recollected in tranquility"[2]. Compared to the neoclassicists, romantics such as Edgar Allan Poe or Victor Hugo were “modern”. They anticipated mentality changes in the Western world. Parts of western modernity were shaped by interactions and cross currents between Europe and the United States during the 19th and 20th century. These centuries were characterised by a break from the established rules and the artistic past and were times of new technologies as well as increasing interaction between the two sides of the Northern Atlantic. Such Euro-American relations, may they be artistic, cultural and even political have never died out. To understand our Western modernity, this paper shall examine two different aspects of these artistic cross-currents. Firstly, the romantic current played an important role in all the arts, ranging from poetry to architecture. Finally, the appearance of the documentary art of photography has in many aspects shaped modernity and even later led to the invention of motion picture and cinema[3]. Firstly, the Romantic Movement that swarmed across Europe and North America starting in the 19th century helped to shape