European culture in the 18th century. European culture of the 18th century

⁰

→

The culture of the 19th century is considered to be bourgeois culture . The development of capitalism was accompanied by the formation of a powerful labor movement, the emergence of the world's first workers' party (England). The ideology of the labor movement was Marxism , which had a huge impact on the special-political life of Europe and the whole world. In 1871, the workers of Paris established their power, the Paris Commune, for several months. Under the leadership of K. Marx and F. Engels, a 1st International- International Association of Workers. After its dissolution in European countries began to emerge social democratic parties who were guided by the ideas of Marxism. Marxism occupies a leading place in the public consciousness of the 20th century.

In the 19th century, a new concept of cultural development emerged - "Elite Concept" , according to which the producer and consumer of culture is a privileged class of society - the elite. The concept of elite culture was substantiated by Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. Elite- this is the best, selective, chosen: what is in every social class, social group. The elite is the part of society most capable of spiritual activity, endowed with high creative inclinations. It is the elite, according to these philosophers, that ensures social progress. Consequently, culture should also be focused not on the needs of the "mass", "crowd", but on meeting the needs and needs of this layer of society - people capable of aesthetic contemplation and artistic and creative activity. (The work of Schopenhauer "The World as Will and Representation" and F. Nietzsche "Human, Too Human" and "Thus Spoke Zarathustra").

XIX century - the century of final approval capitalist form of management , the age of intensive development of industrial production, its branches such as metallurgy, mechanical engineering, energy, etc. This is also the age of the full demand for science, which rises to an unprecedented early height. The needs of industry dictate the formation of a system of school and vocational education in Europe. The number of students at universities is growing. England becomes a country of universal literacy. Here are just a few of the scientific achievements of this time:

Substantiation by Charles Darwin of the main factors in the process of evolution of the organic world from ape to man;

The creation by physicist Michael Faraday of the doctrine of the electric field;

Development by microbiologist Louis Pasteur of a method of prevention against anthrax;

Description by the botanist Robert Brown of the nucleus of a plant cell and the discovery of the random movement of the smallest particles (Brownian motion).

The practice of the cultural life of the 19th century included the holding of scientific conferences, symposiums, world exhibitions, etc. Expanding technical equipment of artistic culture; at the end of the 19th century, cinema art appeared, design (artistic design) appeared as a result of the rapid development of technology, the massization of production and the expansion of the boundaries of aesthetic activity. Experiments are being carried out to combine music and color. (A.Skryabin, M.Ciurlionis).

There is no single dominant in the artistic culture of the 19th century. Various pan-European styles and directions are formed and function.

Romanticism (the first third of the 19th century) is a broad ideological and artistic movement in the spiritual life of European and American society. Originating in Germany (Schiller, Goethe, the Schlegel brothers), Romanticism expanded throughout the world:

In poetry, his representatives were D. Byron, V. Hugo, V. Zhukovsky;

In romantic philosophy and aesthetics - F. Schelling, S. Kierkegaard;

In music - F. Chopin, G. Berlioz, F. Schubert;

In painting - E. Delacroix, T. Gericault, D. Constable, O. Kiprensky;

In fiction - V. Scott, A. Dumas, E. Hoffman, F. Cooper.

Romanticism was based on the creative method, which proclaimed the absolute and unlimited freedom of the individual as its main principle. Artists committed to this trend depicted dramatic insoluble contradictions between base reality and a lofty ideal. Hence the departure of the romantic into the world of illusions, into fantastic countries, and so on. In romanticism, the main thing is not a show of individualism, but a heroic-pathetic glorification of loneliness.

The works of artists (novel) are filled with feelings of delight and despair, a sense of the eternal mystery of the world, the incomprehensibility of its complete knowledge. As a rule, the artist creates his own world in a work of art, more beautiful than real life. Romanticism was the reaction of the progressive people of Europe to the collapse of the ideals of the Great French Revolution. Romanticism manifested itself with the greatest force in the artistic poetry of Germany, France, and England.

It is also reflected in music. This is the musical creativity of Chopin, Berlioz, Schubert, Liszt.

Realism 19th century is a creative process and method inherent in the artistic culture of European countries, according to which the task of art is a true depiction of life. In the works of Lessing and Diderot, as early as the 18th century, the idea of a realistic "free imitation" of nature was developed. Realism of the 19th century was called critical realism . It has the following features:

Deep understanding of life;

Wide coverage of reality;

Artistic understanding of the contradictions of life.

The character of a person is interpreted in realistic works as a contradictory and developing unity. It can change depending on the circumstances of life. Realist writers (N. Gogol, F. Stendhal, O. Balzac, A. Pushkin, F. Dostoevsky, A. Chekhov, L. Tolstoy, etc.) are characterized by a heightened interest in the social principle of reality.

In the last third of the 19th century, Western European and American culture developed naturalism - an artistic method, according to which the nature of art was explained through ideas borrowed from natural science. The naturalist artist strives for the external plausibility of details, the depiction of single phenomena, as a result of which the influence of the social factor is clearly underestimated. The artist gives "Pieces of Life", considering such a detailed description as a condition for truthfulness in art. (E. Zola, G. de Maupassant, G. Hauptman, D. Mamin-Sibiryak).

In the 60s and 70s of the 19th century, an artistic movement arose in France, called impressionism . Impressionism is most clearly embodied in the visual arts. The stylistic features of Impressionism are:

Refusal of isolation and stability of the image of objects;

Fixation of instant, as if random situations, fragmentation;

Unexpected angles of figures and objects.

In painting, impressionism most clearly manifested itself in the art of O. Renoir, E. Degas, E. Manet, C. Monet, C. Pissarro. These artists sought to convey the beauty of the fleeting states of nature, the mobility and variability of human life. Landscape works they wrote in the open air (en plein air) to convey the feeling of sparkling sunlight. This gave rise to a new painting technique, which was especially manifested in the color scheme of the canvases: local color, the subtlest sense of color, its dependence on lighting and the state of the air.

Nature was understood by the Impressionists as an objective reality that can be trusted. An artist in their understanding is an intermediary between people and nature, designed to reveal to people the beauty of this world, their impression of it.

1 XVIII century in Europe - the age of Enlightenment.

2 Bourgeois-enlightenment trend in art and Rococo culture. new classicism.

To feel the spiritual atmosphere of the 18th century in Europe, let's turn to the most popular French playwright of that time, J.-P. Beaumarchais, and his The Barber of Seville:

"Rosina. You always scold our poor age.

Bartolo. Please forgive my impudence, but he gave us such

what can we praise him for? All sorts of nonsense: freethinking, universal gravity, electricity, religious tolerance, smallpox vaccination, cinchona, an encyclopedia and petty-bourgeois dramas.

Dr. Bartolo, the comic hero of Beaumarchais, listed here the social, political, philosophical, scientific problems that worried generations of the 18th century. The 18th century lived with these problems. Books were written about them and argued in coffee houses in Paris and London, in the noble living rooms of Moscow and St. Petersburg, people of high education and semi-literate apprentices spoke about them. These were great scientific discoveries and at the same time great discussions of the century.

This era is the era of noble-estate monarchies in Europe, the century of feudalism, absolutist royalty and the Great French Revolution, if Louis XIV identified himself with the state, then his descendant Louis XV, following the same ideological program, declared: "This is legal, because I I want this."

And lawlessness flourished. Let's turn to the facts. In France, this was especially evident in the so-called arrest warrants. An empty form signed by the king gave the right to arrest anyone whose name would be entered in the appropriate column. Some enterprising people even began to sell such forms for 120 livres apiece. These warrants literally flooded the country.

Although serfdom was abolished in France as early as the 15th century, the legally free peasants, who rented land from the landowners, lived in such poverty that they often abandoned their entire household in complete despair and went to the city, replenishing the cities and roads with new crowds of beggars. Over a million of them roamed the country.

The government, in all its policies, in all legislative acts, affirmed social class inequality. So, in 1781, Louis XVI issued a special decree that only those persons who had four generations of ancestors who were nobles could receive the officer rank. The future brilliant Napoleonic generals Marceau, Ney, Augereau, Bernadotte (later King of Sweden) had the rank of non-commissioned officer and could not advance further in the service. Aristocrats immediately received the highest command posts. The Vicomte Thureny was appointed commander of the cavalry at the age of 13, the Duke of Fronsac received the rank of colonel at the age of seven.

The 18th century was full of endless wars that aggravated all social contradictions. In 1700, the Spanish king Charles II died, leaving no heirs. Between England, France and Austria began the war for the Spanish crown, which lasted 13 years. After 27 years, approximately the same situation arose in Austria. Now there was a war for the Austrian succession, which lasted 8 years. Six European states participated in it. 8 years after its end, the so-called Seven Years' War broke out, which also drew soldiers from 6 states into the massacre.

Voltaire, a witness to these events, wrote in his "Philosophical Dictionary": "The most remarkable thing about this hellish event is that each of the killer leaders solemnly calls on God to help him kill his neighbors. If any military leader manages to kill two, three thousand people, then they still don’t thank God for this, but if tens of thousands die from sword and fire and several cities collapse to the ground, then a magnificent prayer is arranged, a long song is sung in four parties in a language incomprehensible to any of the combatants "(Latin).

So, the picture of the social and political life of the peoples of Europe in the eighteenth century is rather gloomy. And, nevertheless, there are people-writers, philosophers, scientists, optimistic, whose ideas contrast with the current situation. In England, these are J. Locke, J. Toland, A. Smith, D. Hume. In France - F. Voltaire, J.-J. Russo, D.

Diderot, J. D'Alembert, E. Condillac, N. Holbach, D. La Mettrie; in Germany - G. Lessing, I. Herder.

Seeing in history a gradual ascent from ignorance to enlightenment, they believed in the limitless possibilities of reason and the power of ideas, believing that reason, in the process of the progressive development of society, would eventually triumph over vices and lead humanity to universal prosperity.

If the mind is an omnipotent human ability, then scientific knowledge is understood as the highest and most productive form of mind activity. Who are these people? Just groundless, beautiful-hearted dreamers? What fuels their optimism? To solve this riddle, let's listen to the dialogue of Beaumarchais's characters. In this they were convinced by the achievements of scientific thought. That small part of humanity. Which had the opportunity to engage in intellectual work, did a great job in the XVIII century.

The 18th century began to deal with electricity. And although further achievements were made in the XIX century, but even then it became the subject of general interest and great hopes. The healing properties of cinchona in the fight against malaria, from which they knew no salvation in those days, became known. Then, for the first time, smallpox vaccination began to be used. It was a sensational discovery. Smallpox mowed down peoples, tens and hundreds of thousands of people died. In Russia, the young Tsar Peter II died of smallpox, in France - King Louis XV.

One of the important events in the spiritual life of the century was the comprehension of the laws of universal gravitation discovered by Newton. He completed the creation of a new mechanistic picture of the Universe, begun by his predecessors Copernicus and Bruno, Kepler and Galileo, Descartes and Leibniz. Voltaire spread the ideas of the great Englishman on the Continent. The Russian Academy, precisely for the dissemination and popularization of Newton's ideas and discoveries, awarded him the title of its honorary member.

In the everyday speech of the 18th century, all new scientific, social and political ideas were associated with the word "philosophy". This word frightened the conservatives and vice versa was uttered with delight by people eager for change.

The central point of this new "philosophy", i.e. philosophical and ideological system of the Enlightenment was the problem of man in society. The need for comprehension and new solutions to this problem has matured for at least two previous centuries - the Late Renaissance and the tragic-humanistic 17th century. The era of religious wars, fragments of which were the first bourgeois revolutions, led to a deep secularization of culture. By the end of the seventeenth century religion has ceased to be the universal organizing form of society. It has now become either an ideology in the narrow sense of the word (a rationalized set of dogmas serving special state or estate interests, or an inalienable personal faith). This process was accompanied by an unprecedented moral crisis, legal lawlessness. We got acquainted with the essence of this crisis and its egregious manifestations in lectures on the culture of the Renaissance and the 17th century.

During this period, a very dramatic situation developed; either Western European society and its culture cease to exist, or it finds ways of salvation. And it did not perish, because Western culture was able to create new moral and legal absolutes, which was objectively requested by the era, and by proclaiming which, the rising bourgeoisie could only secure the role of a general democratic leader. It was this system that was the foundation of the ideology of the Enlightenment. Central to its development belonged to the famous English philosopher John Locke, a close friend of Newton. His Essay on Human Reason and Treatise on Public Administration contained a positive program adopted by both the English and French Enlightenment.

Its main elements are: a) heightened attention to issues of distributive and punitive justice ("to each his own"), b) development of contract ethics, i.e. culture of compliance with treaties and agreements, c) the idea of inalienable natural rights to life, liberty and property, granted to each individual from birth.

So, to observe justice, to honor agreements, to respect other people's freedom - the system of moral absolutes of the Enlightenment.

Following Locke, the French enlighteners Rousseau and Montesquieu substantiated the theory of the social contract. In their works, they carried the idea of the formation of the state through an agreement between the people and the rulers, i.e. those to whom he hands over part of his power. At the same time, the sovereign is obliged to rule only on the basis of reasonable laws that ensure the benefit of each person and the people as a whole. In this regard, Montesquieu denied the right to the legitimacy of unlimited power, and even more so - despotism. His ideal was an English constitutional monarchy with a parliament and a clear separation of the three branches of government: legislative, executive and judicial,

It should be noted that the French Enlightenment in general is characterized by a great diversity of political and philosophical positions. From which absolutism, social inequality and clerical obscurantism were attacked.

At the first stage (20-40 gg.) Enlightenment included a large number of people from the aristocracy. It seemed to them, as, indeed, to the representatives of the third estate, that it was possible to resolve the dispute with the absolute monarchy by peaceful means (Voltaire, Montesquieu, and others). The second generation of enlighteners, which ideologically took shape in the 1950s, is strikingly different from them. These are those who will "enlighten their heads for the coming revolution" - Diderot, Helvetius, Holbach, people who relied on the materialistic doctrine of nature and a radical social program. Finally, Rousseau stands apart, who was a deist in his philosophical and religious positions, but, expressing the political interests of the lower classes, exposed the illusions of his associates regarding the "instruments of enlightenment."

Since the main field of struggle in this period was the field of ideology, this significantly changed the position of art in the system of philosophical reflections. Questions of the essence of art and its educational possibilities attracted the closest attention, because here, according to the enlighteners, a direct path to the "natural man" was opened, i.e. a natural, free, feeling - first of all - being, striving for pleasure and avoiding pain. This is how the “natural man” was seen by most of the enlighteners: striving for their own benefit and natural joys, but not at the expense of other people. .

Aesthetic problems were most deeply and comprehensively developed by the French educator D. Diderot. Among his most famous art-critical works are a number of review articles on the exhibitions of the Academy, called Salons (1759-1781). Diderot, the critic, demanded that the artist turn art into a means that "would make us love virtue and hate vice." He saw the way to this in strengthening the content side of art. Wanting to characterize the level of the exhibition of the Salon of 1759 that did not satisfy him, Diderot exclaimed: "There is a lot of painting, little thought."

The affirmation of the moralizing nature of art was carried out by him steadily, over many years. He didn't do it subtly, but openly, with a challenge. In the Salon of 1763, in connection with the works of Greuze, he exclaimed: “I like this genre itself - moralizing painting. And for many years the brush was devoted to the praise of depravity and vice. turns out great"

Diderot's criticism was supposed to provide theoretical assistance to everything that was presented in art from an enlightening position, progressive. The most striking example of this is Diderot's struggle with established classicism in the 17th century. genre hierarchy. In this hierarchy, of course, there was no place for either the "petty-bourgeois drama", which Beaumarchais's character had already disapprovingly mentioned in The Barber of Seville, nor the everyday novel, nor the comic opera, nor genre painting. Meanwhile, it was precisely in these genres that the third estate, not yet having the strength for other forms of self-affirmation, opposed the feudal decline of morals with its own ideal of patriarchal virtue and sensitivity. Diderot, without completely destroying the usual pyramid of genres, drove

there is a wedge in it, the so-called "middle genres", which he places between the traditional "high" and "low".

In dramaturgy, the role of the wedge was played by the “serious genre”, standing between tragedy and comedy, its subject being “virtue and duty of man”. The average genre in painting, according to Diderot, was the so-called "genre painting". She resisted the rigidity of the historical picture on the debunking of which the critic did not spare colors in his salons. A new genre or moral painting was embodied for him in the work of two artists - Grez and Chardin. "The Village Bride", "The Paralytic" by Greuze, who embodied the ethical ideal of the third estate and were loved by the public, received the highest praise in Diderot's "Salons".

This high appreciation of Grese's art has not stood the test of time. The audiences of subsequent generations, dry and superficial in painting, the canvases of this artist seem importunately instructive and tearful. But the work of Jean-Baptiste Chardin never ceases to amaze art lovers. Chardin is an exceptionally "peaceful" artist in his disposition. Peaceful and cozy are his genre scenes depicting good housewives, mothers of the family, busy with household chores and children; peaceful and modest are his still lifes, most often composed of the simplest household items - a copper tank, jugs, buckets, baskets. But his very calm simplicity, his commitment to purely worldly motives, was in those days a challenge to aristocratic tastes. With amazing pictorial talents, individual technique of multi-layered translucent color, Chardin poeticized, humanized the world of ordinary everyday things.

If Chardin, Grez, Diderot, Rousseau in their work reflected the life and attitude of people from the third estate with their virtue, simplicity and sentimentality, then what was this world like, which became the object of sharp criticism from the enlighteners?

After the death of the old Louis XIV in 1715, as if all the instincts of money gain and the “sweet life”, somehow restrained and hidden earlier by the strict administration of the “Great Monarch”, come out. Enrichment, swindles and scandals frankly, defiantly fill the life of secular society, with extraordinary swiftness Paris is transformed from a prayer-closed city, as Madame de Maintenon, the aged favorite of the king, made it into the capital of entertainment, business transactions and adventures. The aristocracy is in a hurry to have fun before the "flood". Morals become frankly lax, tastes - whimsical, forms - light and capricious. This environment became a breeding ground for the new artistic style of rococo (from the French "rocaille" - shell). The court environment did not itself form this style - it picked up what was worn in the evening air of Europe in the 18th century. The European world was living out its last class-patriarchal illusions, and Rococo sounded like a farewell elegy.

Compared to baroque, rococo brought with it far more than just cuteness and whimsicality. It freed itself from rhetorical bombast and partly rehabilitated natural feelings, albeit in a ballet and masquerade costume.

The talented French artist Antoine Watteau is considered the founder of Rococo in painting. His work best of all shows what kind of human discoveries this "butterfly art" concealed in itself. The fusion of domestic, decorative and theatrical in intimate lyrical fantasies - this is the whole of Watteau, but this is also the nature of the rocaille style, it is difficult to imagine an artist more charming in his sincerity and grace than Watteau. His paintings are masterpieces of refined painting, a real feast for the eye, but one that loves delicate, soft shades and combinations.

Watteau wrote with the smallest beaded strokes, wove a magic net with golden, silvery and ashy tints. “How can he in his paintings of “gallant holidays” (“Society in the Park.” “Feast of Love”) express in like porcelain figurines living feelings and this suddenly, among the fragile fun, embracing mental fatigue and sadness.

The poignant melancholic motif of the loneliness of a person locked in himself, as in a cage, sounds even stronger in the painting "Gilles" And it was precisely Watteau, the gallant, graceful, rocaille Watteau who could express - it means he felt that way, it means that even then people were familiar feeling of emptiness.

Every style in artistic culture has both its depth and its superficial foam; along with deep artists there were very superficial, external artists. This bifurcation of style is especially clear in the post-Renaissance era: it can be observed in the baroque, and in classicism, and in rococo. As far as Watteau is deep, so Boucher, who considered himself a student of Watteau, is outward. François Boucher, a fashionable artist who enjoyed the special patronage of Madame de Pompadour, created a typical court rocaille, lightweight and mannered. He painted pastoral scenes with cutesy shepherds and shepherds, erotic scenes, chubby naked charmers disguised as Dian and Venus, rural landscapes - some kind of abandoned mills and poetic huts, similar to theatrical scenery. Boucher was very fond of piquant details, playful ambiguities. The gentle and light colors of Rococo at Boucher are already so tender that they resemble something confectionery. At the same time, they are very refined: pink, pale green, smoky bluish.

In Rococo painting, light shades of tone are fixed and isolated as independent colors. They were even given names in the spirit of "gallant" style: "the color of the thigh of a frightened nymph", "the color of lost time", etc.

Applied art occupied an important place in culture. The same Boucher worked a lot in the field of decorative painting, made sketches for tapestries, for painting on porcelain. In furniture, dishes, clothes, carriages of the Louis XV style, again, there was an attraction to the invented, a desire to free oneself from the semi-official nature of the strict court classicism of Louis XIV in the late period of his reign, to find himself in an unreal world of fragile graceful castles. In the era of Louis XV, clothes, hairstyles, the very appearance of a person became more than ever, works of art. People were recognized and valued by their dress. How miserable and miserable was the clothes of the "plebeians", "mob", so dressed up in the feathers and dust of the Lord. Officials were assigned a special outfit. Even the executioner was ordered to appear in a curled wig, a camisole embroidered with gold and shoes with bows. The idea of an "aristocratic challenge" to reality was clearly felt in the appearance of noble ladies. The thinness of the waist was brought to the limit with the help of a corset, and the splendor of the skirts was enhanced by tanseries and crinolines, so that the figure acquired a silhouette that was completely unusual for a real body and at the same time was surrounded by shimmering clouds of muslin, feathers and ribbons. The external portrait of a lady - an aristocrat was completed by a tower-shaped hairstyle, showered with light powder. They wanted to see a woman as a precious doll, a bird of paradise, an exquisite orchid.

The fantastic environment of rocaille interiors befitted such a creature. If the Renaissance architects sought to divide space and plane into simple and clear geometric parts, if in the culture of the Baroque, despite all its dynamism, a certain structure and symmetry still remain, then the tendency of the Rococo is complete asymmetry.

Forms are changeable, like clouds, twisted like shells, branched, curly. The plane of the wall is destroyed by decorative panels and mirrors reflected in each other. Fragile tables and poufs stand on thin, bent-down legs, like ballerinas on pointe shoes. Notions of heaviness, mass are deliberately banished, and Rococo makes every thing play an unnatural role that does not follow from its structure. Fanciful knick-knacks made of mother-of-pearl and porcelain are becoming extraordinarily popular.

The hedonistic culture of the Rococo, with its piquant plots, sophistication and beautiful playthings, is very different from the painting of Chardin and Greuze, the literature of Beaumarchais, Diderot and Rousseau, and yet they have much in common. All these cultural phenomena reflect time, the special spiritual atmosphere of the era, the worldview of a person of the eighteenth century - signs of a new humanity - more fragile, but also more spiritual than the ideals of the "epoch of Versailles". The abstract principles of the monarchy and the church, which demanded human sacrifices and received them in abundance in their time, are losing confidence. Earthly happiness and its natural gifts are being released little by little from harsh sentences and restrictions and imperiously demand attention and respect.

But the more the time of the Great and terrible French Revolution approached, the more dramatically the ideas, moods and tastes changed.

Very indicative in this regard is the change in Diderot's position in his theory of middle genres. As the revolution approached, when the previously hidden possibilities of tragedy (and historical painting) began to be revealed, he spoke out against the narrow-mindedness and complacency of the petty-bourgeois drama, the meanness and self-satisfaction of the bourgeois. Hydro's Paradox of the Actor is called the first theoretical document that marked the entry of the theater of France into the heroic, pre-revolutionary period. What a contrast to Diderot's work of the late 1950s in Paradox, his warning to the actor "Take into the theater your everyday tone ... your homely manners ... and you will see how pathetic, how weak you will be."

A new classicism of the revolutionary bourgeoisie reigned, having rented the tone and colors of ancient heroes. This was already the third attempt in the history of European culture to revive ancient ideals and, apparently, the least successful and interesting. The Roman cult of the heroic and pathos of civil deeds was combined with an imaginary naturalness, simplicity, pomposity, static figures, tortured rationalism. The ideologists of classicism were sure that by imitating antiquity (understood by them in their own way), art thereby imitates nature. In some respects, classicism departed from "nature" even in comparison with Rococo: at least in that it rejected the pictorial vision, and with it the rich culture of color in painting, replacing them with coloring.

The standard-bearer of the art of the Revolution was Louis David. In his only masterpiece, The Death of Marat, created on the rise of an unquenched sense of grief, he managed to overcome the limitations and bombast of the new revolutionary classicism. Subsequently, David never rose to such an artistic height. An unfortunate abstraction lurked in the cult of the heroic. David saw heroes in Robespierre and Marat; after the fall of the Jacobin dictatorship, he soon just as sincerely surrendered his soul to Napoleon. And this was not only a feature of David's personal biography, but also of the whole direction of classicism, which he so vividly represented. The borrowed ideals and norms of classicism paradoxically contained opposing social ideas: both rebellion against tyranny, and worship of tyrants, and ardent republicanism, and monarchism. And Napoleon himself was inherent in this duality. The art of bourgeois classicism over the course of some 15 years repeated in miniature the evolution of ancient Rome revered by it - from republic to empire.

The 18th century in European history ended with a series of bloody, tragic events that destroyed the bright ideals and beautiful-hearted illusions of enlightenment culture.

LITERATURE

1 Averintsev S.S. The second birth of European rationalism / / Questions of Philosophy. - 1989. - No. 3

2 Dmetrieva N.A. Brief history of art. - M.: Art, 1975

3 Kagan M.S. Lectures on the history of aesthetics. - L .: Avrora, 1973

4 Solovyov E.Yu. The Locke phenomenon / The past interprets us. - M.: Politizdat, 1991

5 Yakimovich A.K. Chardin and the French Enlightenment. - M .: Art, 1981

6 Yakovlev V.P. European culture of the XVII-XVIII centuries. - Rostov-on-Don, 1992

Europe in the 18th century is predominantly a rural world. Most of the city dwellers lived in small towns. The crisis of the old regimes of Europe and their economic systems leads at the end of the XVIII century. to the onset of the era of democratic revolutions (the Great French Revolution (1789-1794), which demanded the embodiment of the idea of "freedom, equality, fraternity." One of the first decrees of the leaders of the French Revolution was the decree of November 10 (20 Brumaire) 1793 on the abolition of Christianity as religion, in their opinion, socially dangerous, and the establishment of the religion of Reason.

In the culture of the 18th century, two opposite cultural traditions took shape: aristocratic-noble and raznochinskaya, educational.

The aristocratic culture of the 18th century, associated with absolutism, was characterized by gallantry, refinement, etiquette, and hedonism. Rococo becomes the leading direction of secular, court culture in France. All Rococo art is built on asymmetry. The term "rococo" means "shell" ("rocaille"). The characteristic features of the Rococo style are sophistication, a large decorative load of interiors and compositions, a complicated ornament, great attention to mythology. Rococo plots are exclusively love ones, their heroes are nymphs, Bacchantes, Diana, Venus. Even from the Holy Scriptures, those episodes are chosen where one can narrate about love. An example of Rococo in literature are the comedies The Barber of Seville, The Marriage of Figaro by Pierre Beaumarchais (1732-1799), as well as the emergence of a special genre of the novel in letters: S. Richardson, Pamela, or Rewarded Virtue, Clarissa, or the Story of a Young Lady containing questions of private life and showing, in particular, the disasters that may result from the wrong behavior of both parents and children in relation to marriage”; Sh.L. de Montesquieu "Persian Letters"; C. de Laclos "Dangerous Liaisons", etc.

Rococo in painting: artists Jean Antoine Watteau (1684-1721) ("The Island of Love" and others); Francois Boucher (1703-1770), his canvases - "Toilet", "Bathing Diana", etc.

Ignorance and superstition reigned among the nobility. In the aristocratic culture of the 18th century, the “age of women”, the cult of female beauty, sensuality, and sexuality dominated. Huge amounts of money were spent on luxury and entertainment. Morals became depraved, prostitution spread. In this context, as a response to the formation of an autonomous personality in a secular culture, divorced from religious spiritual and moral traditions, in Germany in the 18th century. a reformist movement appears, directed against Lutheran orthodoxy, the formalism of its theology, the weakness of missionary work and social service - pietism (lat. pietas - "duty to God, piety"). Pietists put in the first place strict morality, devotion to religious duty and family obligations, the spread of the Gospel, cooperation in social work, helping the poor, etc. But in many ways, pietists were justly criticized for ostentatious piety, strict, sometimes hypocritical piety.

In general, noble culture enters a stage of decline.

Enlightenment culture is diverse in its type. Ideology of the Enlightenment of the 18th century. is an integral part of the ideology of the early bourgeois revolutions in the Netherlands and England. Enlighteners believed that the transformation of society should be carried out through the dissemination of advanced ideas, the fight against ignorance, religious prejudice, medieval scholasticism and feudal morality. Enlightenment was based on the principle of merotocracy - the promotion of the worthy. The status of a person should be deserved, not inherited, the enlighteners believed. A person can be educated. Enlighteners assigned a decisive role in education not only to the school, but to the whole society as a whole. But since society is imperfect, the way out of the vicious circle is found by the human mind and the natural desire for happiness, imprinted by "nature" in the heart of each individual. Thus, the focus of the ideology of the Enlightenment was the return to nature. Happiness is not the lot of the elite, everyone deserves it. Through moral, political and aesthetic education, the enlighteners sought to achieve the transformation of society on the principles of reason and justice. Enlighteners were convinced that the aesthetic principle can mitigate the innate egoism of people, turn a person into a "citizen".

The Age of Enlightenment is the “golden age of utopias”, which were based on the belief in the ability to change a person for the better, “rationally” transforming political and social foundations. The reference point for the creators of utopias of the 18th century was the “natural” or “natural” state of society, ignorant of private property and oppression, division into classes, living in accordance with reason, and not with “artificial” laws.

The embodiment of the "better worlds" for the people of the Enlightenment were gardens and parks, the best of which at that time were taken care of by representatives of the ruling houses, the aristocracy of Europe. In the parks, an alternative world was constructed that corresponded to the ideas of a happy life. The park has become a place of philosophical conversations and reflections, the personification of faith in the power of reason and the upbringing of lofty feelings. At the same time, the preservation of the “impression of naturalness”, the feeling of “wild nature” was considered the main thing. Often, utilitarian buildings (dairy farms, gardens) were included in the park, responding to the most important moral and ethical postulate of the Enlightenment - the obligation to work. The composition of parks and gardens included libraries, museums, theaters, temples.

In the XVIII century, France becomes the hegemon of the spiritual life of Europe. The universalism of the creative and vital interests of the Enlightenment was expressed in the appearance of encyclopedias. "Encyclopedia of Arts, Sciences and Crafts" (1751-1780) in 28 volumes, created in France, has become not just a collection of information in all areas of culture, but a hymn to the power of reason and progress. All outstanding figures of the Enlightenment in France, Germany, Holland, England, etc. participated in its publication. The soul of this event was Denis Diderot .

Denis Diderot(1713-1784) - scientist-encyclopedist, founder and head of the school of French materialism in philosophy, creator of the school of realism in literature and art. He considered nature itself to be the primary source of art. Diderot believed that only the truth of life can and should become an object of art. The work should be instructive, reflect the advanced ideas of the era, the artist should interfere in public life. He considered the main thing for art to be its moral purpose. Diderot is the founder of the genres of the philosophical novel ("Ramo's Nephew") and the philosophical novel ("Jacques the Fatalist"). In the Enlightenment era, the first public exhibitions - salons - are arranged. Diderot introduces a new genre of literature - critical reviews of salons.

The greatest educator was Voltaire (1694-1778) - philosopher, naturalist, poet and prose writer, exposer of the vices of the state, hypocrisy of the official church, prejudices. The legacy of Voltaire - 70 volumes of works: strict natural science treatises, tragedies ("Oedipus"), philosophical stories, gallant letters, comedies. Voltaire believed that it was necessary to use any means to influence citizens, raising them to fight against the vices and injustices of life. The famous witty satirical work of Voltaire is Candide, or the Optimist. Voltaire forms the whole worldly wisdom of human life in this way: “our garden must be cultivated”, i.e. work no matter what happens. It is work, in his opinion, that saves from "three great evils: boredom, vice and need."

famous French educator Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) in art he defended the simplicity and naturalness of the language, the appeal to the truth of life, the "sensitivity of the good heart" of ordinary people. However, personal feelings and emotions must be subordinated to the highest moral duty, the thinker believed. The meaning of art for Rousseau is to touch simple human hearts and educate with the help of “sensibility” a truly virtuous person and citizen. About this - his sentimental novel in letters "The New Eloise".

Sentimentalism was addressed to the inner, personal, intimate world of human feelings and thoughts. The followers of Russianism were N.M. Karamzin (1766-1826) ("Poor Lisa"); I.V. Goethe (1749-1832) ("The Suffering of Young Werther"); Chaderlos de Laclos (1741-1803) ("Dangerous Liaisons").

French freethinkers and revolutionaries continued to be encouraged classicism with his approval of the desire for a harmonious social order, the need to subordinate the activities of the individual to the interests of the nation, the pathos of citizenship. In the work of the French artist Jacques Louis David (1748-1825) (paintings "The Death of Marat", "The Oath of the Horatii", etc.), the aesthetics of classicism merges with the political struggle, giving rise to revolutionary classicism.

Music of the 18th century strikes a person with the scale and depth of analysis of the most hidden corners of the human soul. In France and Italy - the heyday of opera. In Germany and Austria - oratorios and masses (in church culture) and a concert (in secular). The pinnacle of musical culture is the work of the German composer J. S. Bach (1685-1750) and Austrian composer V.A. Mozart (1756-1791).

There are new intellectual societies - literary salons, Masonic lodges, the British Museum, the Luxembourg Palace, the first Public Art Gallery in France.

The secularization of public consciousness, the spread of the ideals of Protestantism were accompanied by the rapid development of natural science, the growing interest in scientific and philosophical knowledge outside the classrooms and laboratories of scientists.

18th century - the last historical stage of the transition from feudalism to capitalism. The development of culture during this period in all countries Europe passed under the sign ideas of the Enlightenment.

In this century, Germany has developed school of classical German idealist philosophy. In France, the largest detachment of enlighteners was formed, from there the ideas of the Enlightenment spread throughout Europe. In his works (-Persian Letters" and "On the Spirit of Laws") Charles Louis Montesquieu spoke out against unlimited monarchy and feudalism. Voltaire was an outstanding leader of the French Enlightenment. He wrote beautiful literary, philosophical and historical works that expressed hatred of religious fanaticism and the feudal state. The activities of Jean Jacques Rousseau became a new stage in the development of the French Enlightenment. His works contained hatred for the oppressors, criticism of the state system, social inequality.

The fate of French materialism is connected with the names of Denis Diderot, Etienne Bonnot Condillac, Paul Holbach. 50-60s 18th century - flourishing activity of the French materialists. This period is characterized by the simultaneous development of science and technology. Thanks to Adam Smith, political economy becomes a scientific discipline. Science developed rapidly, it was directly related to technology and production. In the XVIII century, literature and music become more significant, gradually they come to the fore among all kinds of arts. Prose is developing as a genre that shows the fate of an individual in the social environment of that time. The genre of the novel, which describes the universal picture of the world, is developing especially fruitfully. At the end of the XVII-XVIII centuries. that musical language begins to take shape, in which all of Europe will then speak. The first were J. S. Bach and G. F. Handel. J. Haydn, W. Mozart, L. van Beethoven had a huge influence on the art of music. Great results were achieved by theatrical art, dramaturgy, which was of a realistic and pre-romantic nature.

A distinctive feature of this time is the study of the main issues of the aesthetics of the theater, the nature of acting. The 18th century is often called the "golden age of the theatre". The greatest playwright P. O. Beaumarchais considered him "a giant who mortally wounds everyone he directs his blows at." The largest playwrights were: R. Sheridan (England), K, Goldoni (Venice ], P. Beaumarchais (France), G. Lessing, I. Goethe (Germany), F. Schiller.

The leading genre of painting of the XVIII century. was a portrait.

Among the artists of this time, Gainsborough, Latour, Houdon, Chardin, Watteau, Guardi can be distinguished. Painting does not reflect the universal fullness of the scope of the spiritual life of man, as it was before. In different countries, the formation of new art is uneven. Painting and sculpture in the Rococo style were decorative in nature.

Art of the 18th century ends with the magnificent work of the Spanish artist Francisco Goya. Cultural heritage of the XVIII century. still amazes with its extraordinary diversity, the richness of genres and styles, the depth of understanding of human passions, the greatest optimism and faith in man and his mind. The Age of Enlightenment is the age of great discoveries and great delusions. It is no coincidence that the end of this era falls on the beginning of the French Revolution. She destroyed the faith of the enlighteners in the "golden age" of non-violent progress. It strengthened the position of critics of his goals and ideals.

Send your good work in the knowledge base is simple. Use the form below

Students, graduate students, young scientists who use the knowledge base in their studies and work will be very grateful to you.

Introduction

Chapter I The Core Values of the Enlightenment

Chapter II Development of Science in the Age of Enlightenment

Chapter III Stylistic and Genre Features of the Art of the 18th Century

Conclusion

Bibliography

INTRODUCTION

The relevance of studying this topic is directly related to the significance of the period under consideration for the development of cultural studies.

European culture of the XVII-XIX centuries. It is customary to combine the culture of the New Age with a common concept, which is characterized by the formation and development of the capitalist mode of production.

For the countries of Europe, the beginning of the 17th century. largely marked by the political reaction that occurred as a result of the events of the late XVI century. The peasant war in Germany (1524-1525), which in many ways was a continuation of the popular movement against the Catholic Church, ended in the defeat of the rebels.

The consequence of this was the triumph of feudal power, with its fragmentation, low level of socio-economic and cultural development. In fact, the first bourgeois revolution in Europe was defeated. France is engulfed in religious and civil wars.

The subject of the study is the process of cultural development in Western Europe in the 18th century.

The object of the study is the main achievements of cultural development in Western Europe.

The purpose of this work is the need to characterize the process of cultural development in Western Europe in the XVIII century.

Achieving this goal involves solving a number of the following tasks:

1. Identify the main values of the Enlightenment.

2. Describe the development of science in the Enlightenment.

3. Highlight the main style and genre features of art in the 18th century.

The following methods were used in the work: descriptive, synthesis, analysis, induction, deduction, statistics.

In this work, we mainly used monographic and educational literature. The use of this type of literature allows us to characterize the main achievements in the development of the culture of the 18th century.

ChapterI. Core values of the Enlightenment

Enlightenment is a necessary step in the cultural development of any country that is parting with the feudal way of life. Enlightenment is fundamentally democratic; it is a culture for the people.

It sees its main task in upbringing and education, in familiarizing everyone and everyone with knowledge.

Like any significant cultural and historical era, the Enlightenment formed its ideal and sought to compare it with reality, to implement it as soon as possible and as fully as possible in practice.

Having put forward the idea of personality formation, the educators showed that a person has a mind, spiritual and physical strength. People come into the world equal, with their own needs, interests, the satisfaction of which lies in the establishment of reasonable and fair forms of human community. The minds of enlighteners are excited by the idea of equality: not only before God, but also before laws, before other people.

The idea of the equality of all people before the law, before humanity is the first characteristic feature of the Enlightenment.

It is not surprising that religion in the form in which it was presented by the church seemed to atheist educators, in the heat of the struggle for extremes, the enemy of man. In the eyes of the enlightening deists, God turned into a force that only brought a certain order into the eternally existing matter. During the Age of Enlightenment, the idea of God as a great mechanic and the world as a huge mechanism became especially popular.

Thanks to the achievements of the natural sciences, the idea arose that the time of miracles and mysteries has passed, that all the secrets of the universe have been revealed, and the Universe and society are subject to logical laws accessible to the human mind. The victory of reason is the second characteristic feature of the era.

The third characteristic feature of the Enlightenment is historical optimism.

The Age of Enlightenment can rightly be called the "golden age of utopia." Enlightenment, first of all, included a belief in the ability to change a person for the better, "rationally" transforming political and social foundations.

A guide for the creators of utopias of the XVIII century. served as the "natural" or "natural" state of society, not knowing private property and oppression, division into classes, not drowning in luxury and not burdened with poverty, not affected by vices, living in accordance with reason, and not "according to artificial" laws. It was an exclusively fictional, speculative type of society, which, according to Rousseau, may never have existed and which, most likely, will never exist in reality.

The Renaissance ideal of a free person acquires the attribute of universality. And responsibility: a person of Enlightenment thinks not only about himself, but also about others, about his place in society. Enlighteners focus on the problem of the best social structure. Enlighteners believed in the possibility of building a harmonious society.

Profound changes in the socio-political and spiritual life of Europe, associated with the emergence and development of bourgeois economic relations, determined the main dominants of the culture of the 18th century.

The main centers of the Enlightenment were England, France, Germany.

From 1689 - the year of the last revolution in England - the Age of Enlightenment begins. It was a glorious era, begun with one revolution and ending with three: industrial in England, political in France, philosophical and aesthetic in Germany. For a hundred years - from 1689 to 1789. - the world has changed. The remnants of feudalism eroded more and more, bourgeois relations, which were finally established after the Great French Revolution, were louder and louder.

The eighteenth century also prepared the way for the dominance of bourgeois culture. The old, feudal ideology was replaced by the time of philosophers, sociologists, economists, writers of the new Age of Enlightenment.

In philosophy, the Enlightenment opposed any metaphysics (the science of supersensible principles and principles of being). It contributed to the development of any kind of rationalism (recognizing reason as the basis of human knowledge and behavior), in science - to the development of natural science, the achievement of which it often uses to justify the scientific legitimacy of views and belief in progress. It is no coincidence that the Enlightenment period itself in some countries was called the names of philosophers. In France, for example, this period was called the age of Voltaire, in Germany - the age of Kant.

In the history of mankind, enlighteners were concerned about global problems:

How did the state come about? When and why did inequality arise? What is progress? And there were just as rational answers to these questions as in those cases when it was a question of the "mechanism" of the universe.

In the field of morality and pedagogy, the Enlightenment preached the ideals of humanity and placed great hopes on the magical power of education.

In the field of politics, jurisprudence and socio-economic life - the liberation of man from unjust bonds, the equality of all people before the law, before humanity. For the first time, the epoch had to resolve in such acute forms the long-known question of the dignity of man. In different fields of activity, it was transformed in different ways, but inevitably led to fundamentally new, innovative in its essence discoveries.

If we talk about art, for example, it is no coincidence that this particular era so unexpectedly for itself, but so effectively, was forced to respond not only to the problem of "art and revolution", but also to the problem of artistic discovery, born in the depths of the emerging new type of consciousness.

The Enlighteners were materialists and idealists, supporters of rationalism, sensationalism (sensations were considered the basis of knowledge and behavior) and even divine providence (they relied on the will of God). Some of them believed in the inevitable progress of mankind, while others viewed history as a social regression. Hence the peculiarity of the conflict between the historical consciousness of the epoch and the historical knowledge developed by it - a conflict that became all the more aggravated, the more thoroughly the epoch itself determined its historical preferences, a special role in the current and future development of mankind. As a current of social thought, the Enlightenment was a kind of unity. It consisted in a special frame of mind, intellectual inclinations and preferences. First of all, these are the goals and ideals of the Enlightenment, such as freedom, well-being and happiness of people, peace, non-violence, religious tolerance, etc., as well as the famous free-thinking, a critical attitude towards authorities of all kinds, rejection of dogmas, including church ones.

The Age of Enlightenment was a major turning point in the spiritual development of Europe, which influenced almost all spheres of socio-political and cultural life. Having debunked the political and legal norms, aesthetic and ethical codes of the old class society, the Enlighteners did a titanic work on creating a positive system of values, addressed primarily to a person, regardless of his social affiliation, which organically entered the blood and flesh of Western civilization.

Enlighteners came from different classes and estates: aristocracy, nobles, clergy, employees, representatives of commercial and industrial circles. The conditions in which they lived were also varied. In each country, the enlightenment movement bore the imprint of national identity.

ChapterII. The development of science in the Age of Enlightenment

France at the beginning of the century is characterized by a significant development of anti-religious tendencies, which became one of the most important aspects of the Enlightenment.

The first and most radical atheistic work that circulated in France in the early 1930s was the “Testament” of the village priest J. Mellier, according to which “everything that your theologians and priests with such fervor and eloquence preach to you about greatness, superiority and the holiness of the sacraments they force you to worship, everything they tell you with such seriousness about their imaginary miracles, everything they describe to you with such zeal and confidence about heavenly rewards and terrible hellish torments - all this, in essence, nothing but illusions, delusions, deceit, fabrication and swindle ... ".

However, as a rule, such a tough position was not characteristic of the Enlightenment, which until the middle of the XVIII century. based on the principles of deism. This theory recognizes the creation of the world by God, but proceeds from the fact that in the future the Lord ceases to interfere in the affairs of nature and society. The deists, to whom Voltaire, Montesquieu belonged, as well as the later figures of the Enlightenment - Rousseau, Condillac, criticized all common religions and spoke of the need for a "natural religion" aimed at the benefit of reason and man. The "sword that cut off the head of deism" was Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason.

If in the 17th century Mathematics played the main role in science, but in the 18th century biology, physics, and geography “catch up” with it.

Science becomes systemic. Rationalism of the 17th century is gradually changing. It gives way to conviction in the possibility and necessity of the development of the mind, the enlightenment of the human personality.

Second half of the 40s. 18th century characterized by the formation of materialistic views.

The works of J. La Mettrie contain assertions that a thinking person will not find either theoretical grounds or practical interests for his faith in God. However, he believed that atheism was not subject to distribution among ordinary people and was understood only by a select few, who stood above the rest in intellectual terms.

At the end of the 40s. materialistic views are substantiated in the works of D. Diderot and P. Holbach, who considered atheism necessary and accessible to everyone.

Mechanistic natural science, which dominated until the second half of the 18th century, studied the movement transmitted from one body to another, explaining the beginning of the movement by the actions of God, as, for example, Newton with his theory of "first push".

Voltaire also recognized the existence of some eternal being, which is the cause of all others. Voltaire's deism was the basis for the formation of the views of the materialists of the 30s and 40s, since he recognized God only as the creation of the world, and later, according to Voltaire, God does not interfere in the affairs of the world. La Mettrie, Diderot, Helvetius, Holbach, whose work coincided with the development of chemistry, geology and biology, received a basis for asserting the development of nature from itself.

By the 60s and 70s. Voltaire also renounces the assertion of the Divine creation of the world, but not the existence of God in general. At the same time, he does not find an answer to such questions as the origin of the world, the location of God.

Diderot initiated the creation of the "Encyclopedia, or Explanatory Dictionary of Sciences, Arts and Crafts", the publication of which lasted from 1751 to 1780.

It became the center that united enlighteners. The book contained information on mathematics, astronomy, geography, described the technology of manufacturing industrial products.

Manufactory is gradually giving way to a more complex organization of labor.

The development of manufactories was characterized by the division of labor down to the simplest operation, which was the impetus for the development of inventive activity. The invention of the "flying" shuttle in weaving, the replacement of the human hand with a mechanism was the beginning of the industrial revolution.

The speeding up of weaving required the creation of a spinning machine, invented by the weaver James Hargreaves. In 1784, Edmund Cartwright gives humanity a mechanical loom. In 1771, an enterprise appeared where the machine was driven by a water wheel. It was no longer a manufactory, but the first factory in which operations were carried out by machines.

In 1784, the mechanic James Watt created a steam engine that could be used regardless of the presence of a river nearby, in contrast to the water wheel. This already marked the transition from manufactory to factory.

The first working steam locomotive was created by self-taught engineer George Stephenson in 1814.

Mass construction of railways began in the 1920s. 19th century New materials and energy sources are being used.

Thus, the development of science in the Enlightenment developed in line with the methodology of rationalism.

ChapterIII. Style and genre featuresartXVIIIcentury

Nature was the model of everything good and beautiful for the Enlighteners. Her real cult will be created by sentimentalists in the 60s. XVIII century, but the fascination with naturalness, enthusiastic contemplation of it begins with the Enlightenment itself.

The visible embodiment of the "better worlds" for the people of the Enlightenment were gardens and parks.

The park of the Enlightenment was created for a lofty and noble purpose - as a perfect environment for a perfect person.

Enlightenment parks were not identical with nature. The composition of parks and gardens included libraries, art galleries, museums, theaters, temples dedicated not only to the gods, but also to human feelings - love, friendship, melancholy. All this ensured the implementation of enlightenment ideas about happiness as a “natural state”, about a “natural person”, the main condition of which was a return to nature. Among them, Peterhof (Petrodvorets) stands out, created on the shores of the Gulf of Finland by architects J. Leblon, M. Zemtsov, T. Usov, J. Quarenghi. This magnificent park, with its unique palaces and grandiose fountains, played an exceptional role in the development of Russian architecture and landscape art, and in general in the history of Russian culture.

European art of the 18th century combined two different trends: classicism and romanticism.

Classicism in fine arts, music, literature is a style based on following the principles of ancient Greek and Roman art: rationalism, symmetry, purposefulness, restraint and strict conformity of the content to its form.

Romanticism puts at the forefront the imagination, emotionality and creative spirituality of the artist.

The art of the Enlightenment used the old stylistic forms of classicism, reflecting with their help a completely different content. In the art of different countries and peoples, classicism and romanticism sometimes form a kind of synthesis, sometimes they exist in all sorts of combinations and mixtures.

An important new beginning in the art of the 18th century was the emergence of trends that did not have their own stylistic form and did not feel the need to develop it. Such a culturological trend was, first of all, sentimentalism (from the French feeling), which fully reflected the enlightenment ideas about the original purity and kindness of human nature, which are lost along with the distance of society from nature.

Practically on the territory of almost all of Europe, there is an invasion of the secular principle into the religious painting of those countries where it used to play a major role - Italy, Austria, Germany. Genre painting sometimes tends to take the lead. Instead of a ceremonial portrait - an intimate portrait, in landscape painting - a mood landscape.

In the first half of the 18th century, Rococo became the leading trend in French art. All Rococo art is built on asymmetry, which creates a sense of unease - a playful, mocking, artsy, teasing feeling. It is no coincidence that the term "rococo" comes from the French "rocaille" - literally a diamond and shell decoration. Plots - only love, erotic, beloved heroines - nymphs, bacchantes, Diana, Venus, making their endless "triumphs" and "toilets".

Francois Boucher (1703-1770) became a prominent representative of the French Rococo. "The first artist of the king", as he was officially called, the director of the Academy, Boucher was a true son of his age, who knew how to do everything himself: panels for hotels, paintings for rich houses and palaces, cardboard for the tapestry manufactory, theatrical scenery, book illustrations, drawings of fans , wallpapers, mantelpieces, carriages, sketches of costumes, etc. Typical plots of his canvases are "The Triumph of Venus" or "The Toilet of Venus", "Venus with Cupid", "Diana's Bathing".

Antoine Watteau (1684-1721) - French painter, turned to images of contemporary life. Watteau's deep reflections on the essence of truly high art are reflected in his canvases. The decor, the sophistication of Watteau's works served as the basis of Rococo as a style direction, and his poetic discoveries were continued by the painters of the realistic direction of the middle of the 18th century.

In line with new aesthetic ideas in art, the work of Jean Baptiste Simon Chardin (1699-1779), an artist who essentially created a new pictorial system, is developing. Chardin began with a still life, painted kitchen items: boilers, pots, tanks, then moved on to genre painting: “Prayer before dinner”, “Laundress”, and from it to a portrait.

French sculpture of the 18th century goes through the same stages as painting. These are predominantly rocaille forms in the first half of the century and the growth of classical features in the second. Features of lightness, freedom, dynamics are visible in the sculpture of Jean Baptiste Pigalle (1714-1785), in his full charm, light rapid movement, immediacy of grace of "Mercury tying a sandal".

Jean Antoine Houdon (1741-1828) - a true historiographer of French society, conveyed the spiritual atmosphere of the era in his sculptural portrait gallery. Houdon's Voltaire is evidence of the high level of French art.

English art of the XVIII century. - the heyday of the national school of painting in England - begins with William Hogarth (1697-1764), painter, graphic artist, art theorist, author of a series of paintings « Career of a prostitute”, “Career of Mota”.

Hogarth was the first painter-enlightener in Europe.

The largest representative of the English school of portraiture Thomas Gainsborough (1727-1888). The mature style of the artist was formed under the influence of Watteau. His portrait images are characterized by spiritual sophistication, spirituality, and poetry. Deep humanity is inherent in his images of peasant children.

Italian painting of the 18th century reached its peak only in Venice. The spirit of Venice was expressed by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (1696-1770), the last representative of the Baroque in European art, painter, draftsman, engraver. Tiepolo owns monumental fresco cycles, both ecclesiastical and secular.

Venice gave the world excellent masters of the veduta - the urban architectural landscape: Antonio Canaletto (1697-1768), famous for the solemn pictures of the life of Venice against the backdrop of its fabulous theatrical architecture; Francesco Guardi (1712-1793), who found inspiration in the simple motifs of the daily life of the city, its sun-drenched courtyards, canals, lagoons, crowded embankments. Guardi created a new type of landscape, marked by poetry, the immediacy of the viewer's impressions.

The eighteenth century also prepared the way for the dominance of bourgeois culture. The time of philosophers, sociologists, economists, and writers has come to replace the old, feudal ideology.

The main literary genre of the Enlightenment is the novel.

The success of the novel, especially significant in England, was prepared by the success of educational journalism.

Enlightenment writers were well aware of how imperfect their contemporary society was and how vicious a person was, and, nevertheless, they hoped that, like Robinson from the first part of the novel by Daniel Defoe (1660-1731), humanity, relying on its own reason and diligence, would ascend to the heights of civilization . But perhaps this hope is also illusory, as Jonathan Swift (1667-1754) so clearly testifies in the allegory novel Gulliver's Travels when he sends his hero to the island of intelligent horses. In the pamphlet "The Tale of the Barrel" he created, he laughed heartily at church strife.

Expanding a positive program in their books, the educators also widely presented how a person lives, deceiving and being deceived. The moral ideal invariably coexists with satire. In the novel by G. Fielding (1707-1754) "The Story of Tom Jones, the Foundling", a parallel construction of the plot is used, reminiscent of a fairy tale: about good and evil brothers, each of whom, in the end, is rewarded according to his merits.

It was a time of new philosophical convictions, a time when ideas were not only expounded in treatises, but easily migrated to novels, inspired and glorified by poets.

A wide range of educational thought is represented in the work of the English poet and satirist Alexander Pope (1688-1744). His philosophical and didactic poem "Essay on Man" became a textbook of new philosophy for Europe. The publication of its first Russian edition in 1757 was in fact the beginning of the Russian Enlightenment.

In the last decade of the century, along with classicism, a new trend was emerging in fiction - sentimentalism, which was most fully expressed in the stories of N.M. Karamzin (1766-1826) "Poor Liza" and "Natalia, the boyar's daughter".

At the end of the XVII-XVIII centuries. that musical language begins to take shape, in which all of Europe will then speak.

The first were Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) and Georg Friedrich Handel (1685-1759).

Bach - the great German composer and organist, worked in all musical genres except opera. Until now, he is an unsurpassed master of polyphony. Handel, like Bach, used biblical subjects for his works. The most famous are "Saul", "Israel in Egypt", "Messiah". Handel wrote more than 40 operas, he owns organ orchestras, sonatas, suites.

The Viennese classical school and its most prominent masters Joseph Haydn (1732-1809), Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) and Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) had a huge influence on the musical art of Europe. The Viennese classics rethought and made all musical genres and forms sound in a new way. Their music is the highest achievement of the era of classicism in the perfection of melodies and forms.

Franz Joseph Haydn, the teacher of Mozart and Beethoven, is called the "father of the symphony". He created over 100 symphonies. Many of them are based on the theme of folk songs and dances, which the composer developed with amazing art. The pinnacle of his work was the "12 London Symphonies", written during the composer's triumphal trips to England in the 90s.

In the 18th century, Haydn wrote many wonderful quartets and clavier sonatas.

He owns over 20 operas, 13 masses, a large number of songs and other compositions. At the end of his career, he created two monumental oratorios - The Creation of the World (1798) and The Seasons (1801), which express the idea of the greatness of the universe and human life. Haydn brought the symphony, quartet, sonata to classical perfection.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart wrote music and played the violin and harpsichord at an age when other children still couldn't write letters. Wolfgang's extraordinary abilities developed under the guidance of his father, the violinist and composer Leopold Mozart. In the operas "The Abduction from the Seraglio", "The Marriage of Figaro", "Don Giovanni", "The Magic Flute", Mozart with amazing skill creates diverse and lively human characters, shows life in its contrasts, moving from joke to deep seriousness, from fun to subtle poetic lyrics.

The same qualities are inherent in his symphonies, sonatas, concertos, quartets, in which he creates the highest classical examples of genres. Three symphonies written in 1788 became the peaks of classical symphonism (Mozart wrote about 50 in total). The symphony "E-flat major" (number 39) shows the life of a person full of joy, play, cheerful dance movement. In the symphony "G minor" (number 40), the deep lyrical poetry of the movement of the human soul is revealed. Symphony "C major" (number 41), called by contemporaries "Jupiter", embraces the whole world with its contrasts and contradictions, affirms the reasonableness and harmony of its structure.

CONCLUSION

The 18th century is characterized by an unprecedented centralization of production, capital, markets, the emergence of powerful monopolies, their expansion at the expense of existing and newly forcibly created colonies, and the redistribution of spheres of influence between states and monopolies.

The consequence of these circumstances was a sharp aggravation of contradictions between various areas of philosophy, ethics, history, and art.

Since the 18th century the power of the bourgeoisie extends in Europe to an increasing number of countries, which expand and strengthen their colonies. In the 19th century the acuteness of socio-economic and political problems increases, which become the subject of consideration of philosophy, are reflected in the theory of art.

A. Schweitzer wrote that the ethical ideals outlined by the Enlightenment and rationalism, when interacting with the real life of society, transformed it. However, since the middle of the XIX century. their influence gradually ceased, because it did not find support in the existing worldview.

Philosophy, ignoring the problems of culture, showed its complete failure, because it did not take into account that the basis of the worldview cannot be only history and natural science.

In the field of art in the second half of the XVIII century. there was a flourishing of the baroque style, which was closely associated with the church and aristocratic culture of that time. It manifested tendencies to glorify life, all the richness of real life. Painting, sculpture, architecture, baroque music glorified and glorified monarchs, the church, and the nobility. The splendor, allegorical intricacy, pathos and theatricality of the Baroque artistic style, the combination of illusion with reality in it, were developed in many cultural monuments, and above all in Italy (the work of the sculptor and architect Bernini, the architect Borromini, etc.). Baroque also spread in Flanders, Spain, Austria, in some regions of Germany, and in Poland. This style manifested itself less noticeably in England and Holland, whose art was closer to genre and everyday realism than the sublimity, excess and conventionality of the Baroque.

A different kind of aesthetics, opposed to the artistic means of the Baroque, was canonized in European art and literature by classicism. Closely associated with the culture of the Renaissance, classicism turned to the ancient norms of art as perfect models; rationalistic clarity and rigor were characteristic of it. Classicism legitimized the principles of "ennobled nature", artificial division into genres - "high" (tragedy, ode, epic, historical, mythological and religious painting) and "low" (comedy, satire, fable, genre painting), introducing the law of three unity - place, time, action.

LISTUSEDLITERATURE

1. Kravchenko A. I., Culturology. - 4th ed. - M.: Academic project, Tricksta, 2003.- 496s.

2. Cultural studies. History of world culture. Textbook / Ed. T. F. Kuznetsova.- M .: "Academy", 2003.- 607p.

3. Cultural studies. History of World Culture / Ed. A. N. Markova. - 2nd ed. revised and additional .- M .: UNITI, 2000.- 600s.

4. Polishchuk V.I., Culturology.- M.: Gardariki, 1999.- 446p.

5. Radugin A. A., Culturology.- M.: Center, 2001.- 304 p.

6. Chekalov D. A., Kondratov V. A., History of world culture. Lecture notes.- Rostov-on-Don: Phoenix, 2005.- 352p.

7. Shishova N.V., Akulich T.V., Boyko M.I., History and cultural studies. - 2nd ed. revised and additional .- M .: Logos, 2000.- 456s.