Memories of Overdevelopment

More Art Notions

Western history has given us two opposites, stemming from the Greeks: Apollo and Dionysus—Classicism and Romanticism. I like this dichotomy as a basis.

Classicism (and it’s precursor the archaic) is a quest for clarity, order, precision, and all the words that allude to those qualities—the head. Romanticism seeks ambiguity, passion, ecstasy, etc.—the heart. Two discrete, oversimplified nutshells.

Greek and Roman temple architecture is the epitome of Classicism. The Gothic Cathedral is an example of the second, though coming into existence long before the Romantic movement.

Other styles of art and architecture are rooted in Classicism or Romanticism. The Italian Renaissance is the rediscovery and creative application of the former. It eventually morphed into the latter, however—the Baroque and Rococo. Then Neoclassicism reappeared. And then NeoGothic. Modernism subsequently divided itself into both: Mies was a Classicist; Gehry, a Romantic.

Question: where to place Japanese, or Chinese, or Indian or Cambodian or Mayan, etc.? Japanese seems to me to emphasize clarity in its underlying order—so Classical? Perhaps both in one?