Rococo

by Victoria Charles, Carl H. Klaus, Klaus H. Carl

Deriving from the French word rocaille, in reference to the curved forms of shellfish, and the Italian barocco, the French created the term Rococo. Appearing at the beginning of the 18th century, it rapidly spread to the whole of Europe. Extravagant and light, Rococo responded perfectly to the offhandedness of the aristocracy of the time. In many aspects, this art was linked to its Baroque predecessor, and is thus also referred to as late Baroque style. While artists such as Tiepolo, Boucher and Reynolds carried the style to its apogee, the movement was often condemned for its superficiality. In the second half of the 18th century, Rococo began its decline. At the end of the century, facing the advent of Neoclassicism, it was plunged into obscurity. It had to wait nearly a century before art historians could restore it to the radiance of its golden age, which is rediscovered in this work by Klaus H. Carl and Victoria Charles.

Genres: Art, Art History

200 pages, Hardcover

First published March 1, 2010

About the author

Victoria Charles received her PhD in history of art. She has published extensively on the subject and has regularly contributed to Art Information, an international guide to contemporary art.

Frequently writing articles for specialised journals and magazines, Victoria Charles recently contributed to a collective work, World History of Art.

Reviews

[Noah Goats · Rating 1 out of 5]

The images in the Kindle edition of this book are low resolution, muddy, lacking detail, lacking color, frustrating to look at, and ugly. I can't blame the author, she has been failed by her publisher. The whole point of this type of book is the images, and in the kindle edition they are inexcusably awful (they look equally bad on my laptop, my phone and my iPad).

[Elisabeth Lapointe]

For school

[Blane Rivera · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautiful

[Sara Delgado García · Rating 2 out of 5]

This short guide to Rococo treats the most representative works of the artistic movement, and gives some insight into how it affected each nation and Art field. However, there is no link nor transitions, the painters, sculptors and architects are listed, with dates and some of their paintings. Sometimes a minimum context is given, just to introduce the name of a duke or a king.
But if you are only looking for a recommendation of painters and artists of the rococo this book will certainly help.

[Autumn Uhrig · Rating 2 out of 5]

There was a decent amount of information but it was more about the history rather than what defined the art style. It was also written in kind of a boring way. The pictures were nice but some of them were of poor quality and fuzzy or pixelated.

[yaelaed · Rating 2 out of 5]

It’s not that this book was bad. It’s just more of a coffee table book. Was definitely wanting more paintings.