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November 21, 2005
The Pre-Raphaelites (thank you Wikipedia!!)
I've long been a fan of a collection of painters, of a style really, that is referred to as "the Pre-Raphaelites". The thing that always bothered me was I kept wondering just who this Raphael was. What was it about his art that was so stunning and ground-breaking to mark all the artists who preceded him as not artists in their own right, but merely as his precursors? I found this especially troubling because I'd never heard of this Raphael. I mean, I could understand the Pre-Picasso's or the Pre-Michaelangelo's, but what made this guy so special? What made this even more frustrating was that whenever I posed the question to another Pre-Raphaelite fan, they never knew the answer.
Well, on a lark this morning, I looked them up on Wikipedia, and I finally got my answer. It turns out that it was quite the opposite of what the name implies. The Pre-Raphaelites came after Raphael. They were a reform movement attempting to restore to the art the things they felt that Raphael and his contemporaries had driven out. From Wiki:
The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (also known as the Pre-Raphaelites) was a group of English painters, poets and critics, founded in 1848 by John Everett Millais, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and William Holman Hunt.
The group's intention was to reform art by rejecting what they considered to be the mechanistic approach adopted by the Mannerist artists who followed Raphael and Michelangelo. They believed that the Classical poses and elegant compositions of Raphael in particular had been a corrupting influence on academic teaching of art. Hence the name "Pre-Raphaelite". In particular they objected to the influence of Sir Joshua Reynolds, the founder of the English Royal Academy of Arts. They called him 'Sir Sloshua', believing that his sloppy technique was a formulaic and clichéd form of academic Mannerism. In contrast they wanted to return to the abundant detail, intense colours, and complex compositions of Quattrocento Italian and Flemish art.
The Pre-Raphaelites have been considered the first avant-garde movement in art, though they have also been denied that status, because they continued to accept both the concepts of history painting and of 'mimesis', or imitation of nature, as central to the purpose of art. However, the Pre-Raphaelites undoubtedly defined themselves as a reform movement, created a distinct name for their form of art, and published a periodical, The Germ, to promote their ideas. Their debates were recorded in the "Pre-Raphaelite Journal".
So, ++good for Wiki.
Blog by Dan at November 21, 2005 10:18 AM
Comments
Well, DUUUH!
Raphael was the youngest of the Ninja Turtles, so the Pre-Raphaelites were just Leonardo, Michaelangelo and Donatello before Raphael was old enough to train with Master Splinter.
Yeesh, Dan! Doncha know anything about classic cartoons?
;-)
Posted by: Adam at November 22, 2005 08:18 AM