In this assignment, I will focus on main artistic movements born with the Industrial Revolution and analyze the Art Market transformation linked to this phenomenon.
Art Form Impact
Before the first Industrial Revolution …show more content…
Two poets at this time, Samuel Coleridge and William Wordsworth wrote a manifesto in the preface of lyrical ballads in 1800 to justify the subjects of common life and the use of common language. Indeed, Wordsworth was concerned that poetry was no longer speaking about anything people cared about but that it was most a use of detached ideas of a decadent aristocracy. This was the beginning of Romanticism. The French author Jean-Jacques Rousseau was urging a return to nature to escape the artificiality of civilization: “I need torrents, rocks, firs, dark, woods, mountains, steep roads to climb or descend, abysses behind me to make me afraid”. Romanticism is about individual experience and intense feelings and is characterized by an enthusiasm in rediscovering the landscape. Also, with the first Industrial Revolution and the invention of faster and more affordable means of transport, travelling was easier and safer than in previous centuries and so grew the idea of travelling for …show more content…
In fact, the values of romantic artists are closely linked to the values of the industrial revolution: free expression, freedom of the press… The established authority of reason was also shaken around this time with the Copernican revolution and philosophy. Before Kant, the mind was a passive container, but Kant showed that the mind participates in shaping a reality which imposes order on experience and so the beauty was no longer on the object like classicism had thought but in the eyes of the beholder. So, romantic artists argued that with imagination, the creative mind can shape reality. The artist is no longer an imitator but a genius, a visionary. Alexander Dumas and Victor Hugo are iconic figures of French Romanticism. But this movement was not accepted at first, on the contrary, it provoked many controversies. A famous example is the Hernani riots. Indeed, the representation of this work of Victor Hugo was considered unacceptable and inappropriate because of its “unwarranted innovation”, its excessive passion and scandalous language. The French Academy said of Romanticism in 1829 that “It puts in disorder all our rules, insults our masterpieces, and perverts mass opinion!”.
But of course, this natural beauty was under threat. Industrialization was beginning to change the face of landscape leading to the destruction