Can something be ridiculous and moving at the same time?
In the early eighteenth century, paintings of beautiful people partying in beautiful places became popular.
The French Academy coined the term for a new genre, “Fete Galante,” to describe the work of their new member, Antoine Watteau.
The paintings can be seen as just silly, from contemporary perspectives. Rich people indulging in theatrical little fantasies.
Romanticizing the simple pleasures of the rural poor.
Wistful, nostalgic, certainly fairly saccharine.
And it wasn’t just painting. This is the period when Meissen was producing fabulous works of porcelain, investing absurd amounts of meticulous labor to produce objects that are utterly useless and tremendously expensive. (more on Meissen elsewhere).
And it wasn’t just painting. This is the period when Meissen was producing fabulous works of porcelain, investing absurd amounts of meticulous labor to produce objects that are utterly useless and tremendously expensive. (more on Meissen elsewhere).
And yet, to paraphrase Walter Pater and Oscar Wilde: Anything which has caught the imagination of an era is of interest. What did people get from these paintings? Was it only wish-fulfillment?
I think something more. In these paintings people become objects of delicacy and grace; landscapes are lush and blurry backdrops for a stage upon which small, happy dramas are enacted. Human whims are aligned with nature, and transient harmonies are achieved.
In these paintings, life is art. That people could take pleasure in imagining such little Arcadias – to me, living in our loud and discordant era, it is a moving (and oddly reassuring) reminder.