define the style neoclassicism?

Answer 1

Here are some definitions for you, with sources:

1. An 18th-century artistic movement, associated with the Enlightenment, drawing on classical models and emphasizing reason, harmony, and restraint. (usinfo.state.gov/products/pubs/oal/gloss.htm)

2. New classicism. A revival of classical Greek and Roman forms in art, music, and literature, particularly during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in Europe and America. It was part of a reaction to the excesses of Baroque and Rococo art. (www.arts-technology.com/art/collectors/artTerms.asp)

3. A European revival style based on ancient Greek and Roman art, architecture, literature, and culture, prevalent during the late 18th and the 19th centuries. Aided by the archaeological discoveries of the remains of Pompeii and Herculaneum, the movement used CLASSICAL MOTIFS and techniques to convey SYMBOLIC and often moral messages. Neoclassical COMPOSITIONS are generally balanced and controlled.
(www.artsmia.org/art_in_america/glossary.html)

4. A movement which dominated during the eighteenth century and was notable for its adherence to the “forms” of classical drama (wps.ablongman.com/wps/media/objects/130/133428/glossary.html)

5. “New” classicism movement of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Neoclassicism was inspired by the classical style of ancient Greece and Rome, and the classical ideals of harmony, idealized realism, clarity, and reason are all generally found in examples of neoclassical architecture, painting, and sculpture.
(www.ket.org/artstoolkit/varts/glossary.htm)

6. Literally, "new classicism," or a renewed interest in the literary and artistic theories of ancient Greece and Rome and an attempt to reformulate them for the current day. A dominant force in seventeenth-century France, neoclassicism promoted restrained passion, balance, artistic consistency, and formalism in all art forms; it reached its dramatic pinnacle in the tragedies of Jean Racine (1639-1699). (highered.mcgraw-hill.com/sites/0767430077/student_view0/glossary.html)

7. A European style of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Its elegant, balanced works revived the order and harmony of ancient Greek and Roman art. David and Canova are examples of neoclassicists. (www.members.aol.com/GRBowles/art-hist/mod-periods-def-nypl93.html)

Hope that helps.

Answer 2

Define Neoclassicism

Answer 3

Neoclassicism

Neoclassicism (sometimes rendered as Neo-Classicism or Neo-classicism) is the name given to quite distinct movements in the visual arts, literature, theatre, music, and architecture. These movements were in effect at various times between the 18th and the 20th centuries. This article addresses what these "neoclassicisms" have in common.

What any "neo"-classicism depends on most fundamentally is a consensus about a body of work that has achieved canonic status (illustration, below). These are the "classics." Ideally— and neoclassicism is essentially an art of an ideal— an artist, well-schooled and comfortably familiar with the canon, does not repeat it in lifeless reproductions, but synthesizes the tradition anew in each work. This sets a high standard, clearly; but though a neoclassical artist who fails to achieve it may create works that are inane, vacuous or even mediocre, gaffes of taste and failures of craftsmanship are not commonly neoclassical failings. Novelty, improvisation, self-expression, and blinding inspiration are not neoclassical virtues; neoclassicism exhibits perfect control of an idiom. It does not recreate art forms from the ground up with each new project, as modernism demanded. "Make it new" was the modernist credo of the poet Ezra Pound.

Speaking and thinking in English, "neoclassicism" in each art implies a particular canon of "classic" models. We recognize them, even if we struggle against their power: Virgil, Raphael, Nicolas Poussin, Haydn. Other cultures have other canons of classics, however, and a recurring strain of neoclassicism appears to be a natural expression of a culture at a certain moment in its career, a culture that is highly self-aware, that is also confident of its own high mainstream tradition, but at the same time feels the need to regain something that has slipped away: Apollonius of Rhodes is a neoclassic writer; Ming ceramics pay homage to Sung celadon porcelains; Italian 15th century humanists learn to write a "Roman" hand we call italic (a.k.a. Carolingian); Neo-Babylonian culture is a neoclassical revival, and in Persia the "classic" religion of Zoroaster, Zoroastrianism, is revived after centuries, to "re-Persianize" a culture that had fallen away from its own classic Achaemenean past. Within the direct Western tradition, the earliest movement motivated by a neoclassicial inspiration is a Roman style that was first distinguished by the German art historian Friedrich Hauser (Die Neuattische Reliefs Stuttgart 1889), who identified the style-category he called "Neo-Attic" among sculpture produced in later Hellenistic circles during the last century or so BCE and in Imperial Rome; the corpus that Hauser called "Neo-Attic" consists of bas reliefs molded on decorative vessels and plaques, employing a figural and drapery style that looked for its canon of "classic" models to late 5th and early 4th century Athens and Attica.