How do we move away from being a civilization that produces art that causes comments like, “my five year old could make this,” back to being one that creates beauty and inspires deep questions? We must reject modernity and embrace tradition. To embrace tradition, we must first learn about it.
Let’s study art history together.
The Embarkation for Cythera
Artist
Jean-Antoine Watteau
Year
1717
Medium
oil on canvas
Dimensions
129 cm in height and 194 cm in width
Location
The Louvre, Paris, France
People just don’t do enough embarkations these days. We leave. We travel. But we seldom embark. There’s a kind of lofty romanticism in an embarkation that the more utilitarian “travel” just lacks. I worry sometimes that humanity has become too utilitarian. To embark implies life and adventure await.
This painting is a classic piece of Rococo art, which is to say it is filled with romanticism. The movement itself might go so far as to be best described as hedonistic. This was a pendulum swing back from the more somber and serious – though also heavily filled with flourishes – Baroque movement.
Rococo painting represents the expression in painting of an aesthetic movement that flourished in Europe between the early and late 18th century, migrating to America and surviving in some regions until the mid-19th century. The painting of this movement is divided into two sharply differentiated camps. One forms an intimate, carefree visual document of the way of life and worldview of the eighteenth-century European elites, and the other, adapting constituent elements of the style to the monumental decoration of churches and palaces, served as a means of glorifying faith and civil power.
Rococo was born in Paris around the 1700s, as a reaction of the French aristocracy against the sumptuous, palatial, and solemn Baroque practiced in the period of Louis XIV. It was characterized above all by its hedonistic and aristocratic character, manifested in delicacy, elegance, sensuality, and grace, and in the preference for light and sentimental themes, where curved line, light colors, and asymmetry played a fundamental role in the composition of the work. From France, where it assumed its most typical feature and where it was later recognized as national heritage, Rococo soon spread throughout Europe, but significantly changing its purposes and keeping only the external form of the French model, with important centers of cultivation in Germany, England, Austria, and Italy, with some representation also in other places, such as the Iberian Peninsula, the Slavic and Nordic countries, even reaching the Americas.
Despite its value as an autonomous work of art, Rococo painting was often conceived as an integral part of an overall concept of interior decoration. It began to be criticized from the mid-18th century, with the rise of the Enlightenment, neoclassical and bourgeois ideals, surviving until the French Revolution, when it fell into complete disrepute, accused of being superficial, frivolous, immoral and purely decorative. From the 1830s on, it was again recognized as an important testimony to a certain phase of European culture and the lifestyle of a specific social stratum, and as a valuable asset for its own unique artistic merit, where questions about aesthetics were raised that would later flourish and become central to modern art.
You might not have realized that the painting above could be viewed as controversial, or even with some hostility, but there you have it. It seems worth the effort then to learn more about it and make up our own minds.
The Embarkation for Cythera (“L’embarquement pour Cythère”) is a painting by the French painter Jean-Antoine Watteau.
It is also known as Voyage to Cythera and Pilgrimage to the Isle of Cythera. Watteau submitted this work to the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture as his reception piece in 1717. The painting is now in the Louvre, Paris. A second version of the work, sometimes called Pilgrimage to Cythera to distinguish it, was painted by Watteau about 1718 or 1719 and is in the Charlottenburg Palace, Berlin. These elaborated a much simpler depiction painted by Watteau in 1709 or 1710, which is now in Frankfurt.
Pilgrimage to Cythera is an embellished repetition of Watteau’s earlier painting, and demonstrates the frivolity and sensuousness of Rococo painting. (c. 1718–19, Berlin)
The painting portrays a “fête galante“; an amorous celebration or party enjoyed by the aristocracy of France after the death of Louis XIV, which is generally seen as a period of dissipation and pleasure, and peace, after the sombre last years of the previous reign.
The work celebrates love, with many cupids flying around the couples and pushing them closer together, as well as the statue of Venus (the goddess of love). There are three pairs of lovers in the foreground. While the couple on the right by the statue are still engaged in their passionate tryst, another couple rises to follow a third pair down the hill, although the woman of the third pair glances back fondly at the goddess’s sacred grove. At the foot of the hill, several more happy couples are preparing to board the golden boat at the left. With its light and wispy brushstrokes, the hazy landscape in the background does not give to any clues about the season, or whether it is dawn or dusk.
It has often been noted that, despite the title, the people on the island seem to be leaving rather than arriving, especially since they have already paired up. Many art historians have come up with a variety of interpretations of the allegory of the voyage to the island of love. Watteau himself purposely did not give an answer.
In the ancient world, Cythera, one of the Greek islands, was thought to be the birthplace of Venus, goddess of love. Thus, the island became sacred to the goddess and love. However, the subject of Cythera may have been inspired by certain 17th century operas or an illustration of a minor play. In Florent Carton (Dancourt)‘s Les Trois Cousines (The Three Cousins), a girl dressed as a pilgrim steps out from the chorus line and invites the audience to join her on a voyage to the island, where everyone will meet their ideal partner. Watteau’s Actors of the Comédie-Française (c. 1711 or later) is now thought to contain portraits of a cast for this play.
When Watteau was accepted as a member of the academy in 1714, he was expected to present the customary reception piece. Although he was given unusual freedom in choosing a subject for his painting, his failure to submit a work brought several reprimands. Meanwhile, Watteau worked on numerous private commissions that his rising reputation brought him. Finally, in January 1717, the academy called Watteau to task, and in August of that year he presented his painting, which had been painted quickly in the preceding eight months.
The painting caused the academy to invent a new classification for it, since the subject was so striking and new. This resulted in the fête galantes (elegant fêtes or outdoor entertainments), a genre subsequently practiced by imitators of Watteau, such as Jean-Baptiste Pater and Nicolas Lancret. While the creation of the new category acknowledged Watteau as the originator of the genre, it also prevented him being recognised as history painter, the highest class of painter, and the only one from which the academy’s professors were drawn. Charles-Antoine Coypel, the son of its then director, later said: “The charming paintings of this gracious painter would be a bad guide for whoever wished to paint the Acts of the Apostles.”
Popularity
In years after Watteau’s death, his art fell out of fashion. During the French Revolution, some eighty years after the work was painted, his depictions of lavishly set pastoral escapades were associated with the old days of the monarchy and a frivolous aristocracy. This particular piece, which had entered the collection of the Louvre in 1795, was used by art students for target practice; an account by Pierre-Nolasque Bergeret (1782–1863) describes the drawing students throwing bread pellets at it. In the early 19th century the curator at the Louvre was forced to place it in storage until 1816 in order to protect the painting from angry protesters. It was not until the 1830s that Watteau and the Rococo returned into fashion.
For a great review of this painting, with more detail and information, please let me direct you to the following:
