Classicism

CLASSICISM. - The concept of classicism, like that of Romanticism and, more recently (limited to the figurative arts) of Baroque, besides designating a historically well-defined taste, has also taken on the broader meaning of a philosophical category, whereby particular characteristics are elevated to absolute principles of art.

For classicism in literature v. UMANESIMO.

In art, from the historical point of view, classicism, represented by the works that flourished in the Greek-Roman world, has no greater value than the tastes proper to other ages and indicated by other names. To have made of classicism the prototype of art, art par excellence, is perhaps still a legacy of Renaissance criticism which, seeing in the works of that period the sum of perfection, caused the other expressions of art that seemed to depart from them to decline by comparison, and for this one need only think of Vasari's theory of art. But the Renaissance (v.) was certainly not a pure and simple revival of Hellenic rationalism, nor was the Neoclassicism of times closer to us, so that it would be erroneous to go seeking in the history of art the repetition of forms that are the expression of other ages and of another sentiment.

Yet already at the beginning of the 17th century criticism advised looking to antiquity to draw preceptive exemplifications from it, counterposing them to the art of so-called naturalistic imitation (identified especially with Venetian painting) in which the touch, the picturesque manner of laying colors on the canvas, were regarded as the opposite of the measured, rational style of classical art. In Italy (to cite a few names) these are the ideas of Agucchi, and then of Bellori; in France of Dufresnoy and then of Roger de Piles. Having reached this point, the step is short to seeing classicism identified with the Academy and, once the principle of "selection" is admitted, with the Eclecticism of which in the 18th century Winckelmann was a supporter, the greatest representative together with Mengs of the classical fanaticism of all times. With the affirmation in the early 19th century of the artists of the Romantic school, a clear taking of position also came to be determined in the field of criticism, and while for the classicists the program is "l'Antiquité toute crue" and the artist is a philosopher for whom art has "no guide but the torch of reason" (David), for the Romantics this very art is condemnable, because coldly calculated and lacking the creative impetus of the artist's imagination (v. NEOCLASSICISMO; ROMANTICISMO).

The two terms, classicism and Romanticism, brought face to face to define two ways of seeing, end up however by decisively taking their place in a dyad in which classicism, identified with the Hegelian "beautiful art," would represent the eternal form of art (Art) while Romanticism would be its negation (Non-Art). A position, one well understands, extremely dangerous, which either means by classicism that type of beauty in which (to put it with Milizia) everything is "grace, delicacy, elegance of forms, of proportions, of contours, of attitudes" as Greek art had been at a certain moment, and then the word classicism becomes an arbitrary concept (as regards universality) that will denote an entirely particular taste, with the further danger of defining as classical works of an entirely external beauty and aesthetically outside of art. Or by classicism one means the achieved aesthetic synthesis of content and form, and then one does not understand why such a term should be used, which will end up becoming equivocal when one must, for example, according to such a principle, define as classical certain expressions of the most modern art. It is clear moreover that in this latter case classicism as the equivalent of Art can always, whenever one wishes, be replaced with other terms, among which is precisely Romanticism itself, meaning by this too that same identity of content and form: so true is this that whoever has wished, like Croce, to insist on the definition of the classical, has had to distinguish classicism from classicistic taste in the same manner, it seems, as those who, in the revaluation of the Baroque, have distinguished it from Baroque-ism, including in the former the aesthetic realizations that respond to his concept of art as intuition-expression of a sentiment "that has become all the most limpid representation" (Breviario di Estetica, p. 35) and instead allowing the term classicism to decline to indicate, historically, all too often negative realizations of imitation and intellectualistic research. One thus arrives at a contamination of the meaning of classicism and that of Romanticism, whereby the work of art ends up being at one and the same time classical and romantic, even if presupposing, with Paul Valéry, in every classicism a prior Romanticism.

In a more strictly formal sense, it will moreover be opportune to add that to the term classicism (counterposed to that of Romanticism or of Baroque) there have been referred linear language (in contrast with the pictorial), surface vision (in contrast with that of depth), closed form (in contrast with open form).

To give of classicism a precise definition, after so many that have been given, without at the same time forcing the meaning of words, is therefore almost impossible, and it will not be out of place then to advise keeping for the term the meaning of an indication of a historical taste, without wishing to abstract from the works - and naturally only from some - of that age which was called classical, general principles of an aesthetic nature.

Gilberto Ronci