History of Architecture (AP313) | Term Paper | 2013

Art and Architecture during the age of Enlightenment

Term Paper for History of Architecture (AP131) HEMANT KANDPAL
Roll Number: 0406901611 Sushant School of Art and Architecture

ABSTRACT
Toward the middle of the eighteenth century a shift in thinking occurred, and is often thought of as part of a larger period which includes the Age of Reason (1). The background for the Age of Enlightenment can already be found in the 16th and 17th centuries when cracks began to appear in the existing structure of society. Centuries of belief in the Bible and orthodox opinions were now pushed into the background by a more astronomical and physical understanding of the world. Thus, it was not new ideas the educated preached, but on the contrary, the scientific breakthroughs of the Renaissance and Baroque period. The difference was the way in which the messages were presented. Neoclassical architecture was a reaction to Rococo and Baroque architectural styles. It is a revival of the styles and spirit of classic antiquity inspired directly from the classical period[2] which coincided and reflected the developments in philosophy and other areas of the Age of Enlightenment, and was initially a reaction against the excesses of the preceding Rococo style (3). New discoveries of Greek and Roman architecture led neoclassical period, which lasted 1850-1900 (4). The term also more specifically refers to a historical intellectual movement, "The Enlightenment." As the century progressed and Enlightenment individualism made an impact on political philosophy and government, architecture responded with forms and historical quotations of style that expressed republican and democratic values.
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History of Architecture (AP313) | Term Paper | 2013

PAPER Idea of enlightenment

The age of The Enlightenment was a period of intellectual exchange in Europe during the 18th century. Several factors contributed to the Enlightenment. Philosophes expressed desire for social and political change which further led to change in art and architecture adopted by the artists and the architects adopting to the views and the ideas which came across at that time. The Enlightenment was less a set of ideas than it was a set of values. At its core was a critical questioning of traditional institutions, customs, and morals, and a strong belief in rationality and science. Thus, there was still a considerable degree of similarity between competing philosophies (5). Prominent Enlightenment philosophers such as Immanuel Kant questioned and attacked the existing institutions and which dominated the ideas of art and architecture which led to development or shift from the traditional architecture they followed. He further simplify the meaning of enlightenment or being enlightened is mans release from his self-incurred guidance and the courage to use your own reason. Kant believed that laziness and cowardice were the prime reasons why many men remained un-enlightened. An age of enlightenment was a time when obstacles to enlightenment were being removed or eroded, Kant believed that late eighteenth century Europe was in such an age. As a society allowed more freedom, it became more enlightened. An enlightened age, therefore, was an age when obstacles had been removed and individuals and society were enlightened and free to pursue selfdetermination and self-rationalization. . Kant concisely argues his opinion and presented examples to illustrate his points. As a society becomes more enlightened, individuals are freer to act upon the enlightened opinions reached through their public role as a scholar. This is a gradual process and Kants defence of the necessity of private reason implies that a disobedient society itself is an obstacle to enlightenment. The arguments made are strong and logical in the context of the monarchic society Kant lived in that while restrictive, allowed for some freedom of thought and expression. Thus such writings enforced artist to break what was traditional and prcised and coming up with different piece of art work and designing (6).

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History of Architecture (AP313) | Term Paper | 2013

The main neoclassical movement coincided with the 18th century Age of Enlightenment, and continued into the early 19th century, latterly competing with Romanticism. In architecture the style continued throughout the 19th and 20th centuries and into the 21st (7). During the age of enlightenment, everything from art and religion to science and mathematics was questioned. Architects would often place emphasis on the structural integrity of their works, but yet they still maintained a sense of extreme beauty and exquisiteness. Objects and buildings were built with simplistic, ordinary geometric shapesBut when combined together, they provided for incredible pieces of art (8).

Style of architecture
The Enlightenment era style places emphasis on symmetry, geometry, proportion and the regularity of parts. Columns, pilasters and lintels, semi-circular arches, hemispherical domes, niches, and aedicules were commonly used (9). Neo-classicism was a child of the Age of Reason (the Enlightenment), when philosophers believed that we would be able to control our destinies by learning from and following the Laws of Nature (the United States was founded on Enlightenment philosophy). Scientific inquiry attracted more attention. Therefore, Neo-classicism continued the connection to the Classical tradition because it signified moderation and rational thinking but in a new and more politically-charged spirit (neo means new, or in the case of art, an existing style reiterated with a new twist.) (10). The Enlightenment encouraged criticism of the corruption of the monarchy (at this point King Louis XVI), and the aristocracy. Enlightenment thinkers condemned Rococo art for being immoral and indecent, and called for a new kind of art that would be moral instead of immoral, and teach people right and wrong. The rococo made use of delicate design coloured in gold with graceful carves. It lightness and charm spoke of the pursuit of pleasure, happiness and love. Artists viewed the "style" differently. In former times, the style of the period was simply the way in which things were done. Now artists were more self-conscious about style, and became more eclectic particularly with architecture (11). As the century progressed and Enlightenment individualism made an impact on political philosophy and government, architecture responded with forms and historical
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History of Architecture (AP313) | Term Paper | 2013

quotations of style that expressed republican and democratic values. The creations of academies which sponsored the growth of the new ideas and promoted the professionalization of artistic and architects and those ideas eventually undermined the authoritarian basis of absolute divine-right monarchy (12). Ranging from the style and subject matter of painting to the appropriate forms of decorative furnishings for intimate spaces in private residences, the way secular genre subjects of everyday life were powerfully expressive of the shift in values from hierarchical institutions of religion and state to the subversive realm of private emotion and the desire for individual happiness and fulfilment. In accordance with the typological eclecticism there was a kind of distribution according to types and styles. Architectural style during the age of enlightenment was particularly well-suited to public buildings such as museums, law courts, and style to religious buildings such as churches and mausoleums.

Aim of art and architecture

Denis Diderot, Enlightenment philosopher, writer and art critic, wrote that the aim of art was "to make virtue attractive, vice odious, ridicule forceful; that is the aim of every honest man who takes up the pen, the brush or the chisel' (Essai sur la peinture) (13). Neo-classicism is characterized by: clarity of form; sober colours; shallow space; strong horizontal and verticals that render that subject matter timeless, instead of temporal as in the dynamic Baroque works; and, Classical subject matteror classicizing contemporary subject matter . Modern times which dawned when the French Revolution of 1789 put an end to so many assumptions made about art. Artists viewed the "style" differently (13). In former times, the style of the period was simply the way in which things were done. Now artists were more self-conscious about style, and became more eclectic particularly with architecture. This judicious history of eighteenth-century French architecture treats themes important to any understanding of the development of the European built environment. Antoine Picon tracks the transition from the classical architecture of the absolutist seventeenth century to the engineering-led construction of the industrial nineteenth. Yet even as he describes the permutations that accompanied this radical transformation from formalism to functionalism (as it is often crudely put), this study's virtue as historical analysis lies in its careful acknowledgment of continuity and its refusal to read
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History of Architecture (AP313) | Term Paper | 2013

the present into the past (14). By 1830-1840 we find a new social and aesthetic situation in architecture. Architects' clients came from the middle classes. The new manufacturers or merchants felt no longer bound by one particular accepted taste. If they liked a style in architecture, then they had a house or a factory or an office building built in that style. Architects believed that anything created by the pre-industrial centuries must be better than anything made to express the character of their own era. Architects' clients wanted other than aesthetic qualities, and they could understand and even check one other quality: the correctness of imitation or proper imitation. Neoclassicism also found expression in architecture and sculpture. Architecture was marked by a return to the intrinsic dignity of what a contemporary called "the noble simplicity and tranquil loftiness of the ancients." The Madeleine of Paris is a faithful copy of a still-standing Roman temple, and the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin was modelled after the monumental entrance to the Acropolis in Athens (15). In England, where the classical style had resisted baroque influences, the great country houses of the nobility now exhibited a purity of design, which often included a portico with Corinthian Columns. Mount Vernon is an outstanding example of neoclassicism in colonial America. The trend in sculpture often revived classical themes from Greek and Roman mythology; statues of Venus became increasingly popular. Claude Michel (17381814) and Jean Houdon (1741-1828) were two French neoclassical sculptors who also achieved notable success with contemporary portraits. Houdon'sPortrait of Voltaire is a well-known example. Temple of Vesta, Rome, 205 AD. This was one of the most important temples of its time. Notice the cylindrical pillars A structure built during the enlightenment era. To the untrained eye, it looks almost identical to the style of architecture that was used to build the temple. It seems as though it is even more refined and advanced however (16). The shift from seventeenth-century classicism to late eighteenth-century neoclassicism has generally been construed at worst, in stylistic terms as a long, drawn out struggle against the frivolity of the rococo, or at best as the natural and unexamined result of the gradual spread of enlightened ideas. The strikingly "abstract," "sublime," and utopian projects of the 1780s and 1790s produced by architects like Etienne-Louis Boulle and Claude-Nicolas Ledoux have either been seen as the forebears of 1920s modernism,

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History of Architecture (AP313) | Term Paper | 2013

following Kaufmann's 1933 essay Von Ledoux bis Le Corbusier, or been demonized as the first signs of the death of traditional architecture at the hands of a cruel and antihumanist geometry (17). The building of that time basically made to be used for public use or open to all based on the Ideas of equality and freedom to all. The famous building of that time are as followed. ROYAL SQUARE: The Royal Square was built in a natural hill at the edge of the Medieval city centre; however, the square burned down in 1731. It was rebuilt in the then fashionable neo-classical style, the style of the age of enlightenment. theatre royal De LA monazite : The theatre and its embellished facade of ionic columns and gable relief, was built in 1819 to replace an earlier theatre. It is now Belgiums leading opera house. PALAIS DE JUSTICE: It was the largest building in the world when it was finished in 1883, bigger than St. Peters Basilica in Rome. The building has 8 courtyards with a surface of 65000 square feet, 27 large court rooms and 245 smaller court rooms and other rooms (18).

Figure1:palaisdejusticehttp://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Palais_de_Justice_Nice.JPG

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Bibliography Essay
2) Philosopher Immanuel Kant, 1784, Beantwortung der Frage: Was ist Aufklrung? , Berlinische Monatsschrift 15) Daniel Brewer, The Enlightenment Past: reconstructing eighteenth--century French thought (2008), p. 1

Websites
1) International World History Project, available at: http://historyworld.org/age_of_enlightenment.htm (Accessed: 16 September 2013) 3) Architecture of neoclassic at: http:// Neoclassicism#cite_note-Irwin-2 (accessed: 5 October 2013) 4) Neo classical architecture available at

http://www.worldofleveldesign.com/categories/architecture/neoclassical/neoclassical _architecture.php 5) Kors, Alan Charles. Encyclopaedia of the Enlightenment. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2003. Print. 6) Smart history, Available at: http://smarthistory.khanacademy.org/1700-1800-Age-of Enlightenment.html (Accessed: 5 October 2013) 7) The Creation of a Systematic, Communicable Architecture available at : http://www.cisapalladio.org/cisa/doc/bio_e.php?lingua=e&sezione=4 (Accessed : 10 October 2013) 8) Neoclassical architecture available at :

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/1383512/Neoclassical-architecture (Accessed : 10 October 2013) 9) Smart history, Available at: http://smarthistory.khanacademy.org/1700-1800-Age-of Enlightenment.html (Accessed: 16 September 2013) 10) What was the Enlightenment, available at:

http://www.markedbyteachers.com/university-degree/creative-arts-andPage 7 of 8

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design/what-was-the-enlightenment-and-what-impact-did-it-have-upon-the-arts.html (Accessed: 10 October 2013)

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http://www.pkwy.k12.mo.us/centralh/teachers/adam/Revolution/chap10.pdf (Accessed: 10 October 2013) 12) Science and the Enlightenment, available at: http://explorable.com/science-andenlightenment-2 (accessed: 5 October 2013)

13) Denis Diderot Philosopher and writer of the French Enlightenment, available at : https://humanism.org.uk/humanism/the-humanist-tradition/enlightenment/denisdiderot/ (Accessed: 10 October 2013) 14) Different periodization in different countries and eras available at:

http://www.eptort.bme.hu/doc/egyeb/bekacomb.pdf / (Accessed: 15 October 2013)

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htmlfiles/enlightenment_age.html (Accessed: 15 October 2013) 16) Architecture of neoclassic at: http:// Neoclassicism#cite_note-Irwin-2 (accessed: 17 October 2013) 17) What was the Enlightenment, available at:

http://www.markedbyteachers.com/university-degree/creative-arts-anddesign/what-was-the-enlightenment-and-what-impact-did-it-have-upon-the-arts.html (Accessed: 10 October 2013) 18) BRUSSELS: artistic and cultural capital with over 80 museums Available at: http://www.visitbelgium.com/uploads/file/ArtArchitecture.pdf / (Accessed: 17 October 2013)

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