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Rococo ( or ), less commonly roccoco, or "Late Baroque", is an 18th-century artistic movement and style, affecting many aspects of the arts including painting, sculpture, architecture, interior design, decoration, literature, music, and theatre. It developed in the early 18th century in Paris, France as a reaction against the grandeur, symmetry, and strict regulations of the Baroque, especially of the Palace of Versailles. Rococo artists and architects used a more jocular, florid, and graceful approach to the Baroque. Their style was ornate and used light colours, asymmetrical designs, curves, and gold. Unlike the political Baroque, the Rococo had playful and witty themes. The interior decoration of Rococo rooms was designed as a total work of art with elegant and ornate furniture, small sculptures, ornamental mirrors, and tapestry complementing architecture, reliefs, and wall paintings. The Rococo was also important in theatre. The book ''The Rococo'' states that no other culture "has produced a wittier, more elegant, and teasing dialogue full of elusive and camouflaging language and gestures, refined feelings and subtle criticism" than Rococo theatre, especially that of France. By the end of the 18th century, Rococo was largely replaced by the Neoclassic style. In 1835 the ''Dictionary of the French Academy'' stated that the word ''Rococo'' "usually covers the kind of ornament, style and design associated with Louis XV's reign and the beginning of that of Louis XVI". It includes therefore, all types of art from around the middle of the 18th century in France. The word is seen as a combination of the French ''rocaille'' (stone) and ''coquilles'' (shell), due to reliance on these objects as decorative motifs.〔Monique Wagner, ''From Gaul to De Gaulle: An Outline of French Civilization.'' Peter Lang, 2005, pp. 139. ISBN 0-8204-2277-0〕 The term may also be a combination of the Italian word "barocco" (an irregularly shaped pearl, possibly the source of the word "baroque") and the French "rocaille" (a popular form of garden or interior ornamentation using shells and pebbles) and may describe the refined and fanciful style that became fashionable in parts of Europe in the 18th century.〔Marilyn Stokstad, ed. Art History. 4th ed. New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 2005. Print.〕 Owing to Rococo love of shell-like curves and focus on decorative arts, some critics used the term to derogatively imply that the style was frivolous or merely modish. When the term was first used in English in about 1836, it was a colloquialism meaning "old-fashioned". The style received harsh criticism and was seen by some to be superficial and of poor taste,〔(Ancien Regime Rococo ). Bc.edu. Retrieved on 2011-05-29.〕〔(Rococo – Rococo Art ). Huntfor.com. Retrieved on 2011-05-29.〕 especially when compared to neoclassicism; despite this, it has been praised for its aesthetic qualities,〔 and since the mid-19th century, the term has been accepted by art historians. While there is still some debate about the historical significance of the style to art in general, Rococo is now widely recognized as a major period in the development of European art. ==Historical development== Although Rococo is usually thought of as developing first in the decorative arts and interior design, its origins lie in the late Baroque architectural work of Borromini (1599–1667) mostly in Rome and Guarini (1624–1683) mostly in Northern Italy but also in Vienna, Prague, Lisbon, and Paris. Italian architects of the late Baroque/early Rococo were wooed to Catholic (Southern) Germany, Bohemia and Austria by local princes, bishops and prince-bishops. Inspired by their example, regional families of Central European builders went further, creating churches and palaces that took the local German Baroque style to the greatest heights of Rococo elaboration and sensation. An exotic but in some ways more formal type of Rococo appeared in France where Louis XIV's succession brought a change in the court artists and general artistic fashion. By the end of the king's long reign, rich Baroque designs were giving way to lighter elements with more curves and natural patterns. These elements are obvious in the architectural designs of Nicolas Pineau. During the Régence, court life moved away from Versailles and this artistic change became well established, first in the royal palace and then throughout French high society. The delicacy and playfulness of Rococo designs is often seen as perfectly in tune with the excesses of Louis XV's reign. The 1730s represented the height of Rococo development in France. The style had spread beyond architecture and furniture to painting and sculpture, exemplified by the works of Antoine Watteau and François Boucher. Rococo still maintained the Baroque taste for complex forms and intricate patterns, but by this point, it had begun to integrate a variety of diverse characteristics, including a taste for Oriental designs and asymmetric compositions. The Rococo style was spread by French artists and engraved publications. In Great Britain, Rococo was always thought of as the "French taste" and was never widely adopted as an architectural style, although its influence was strongly felt in such areas as silverwork, porcelain, and silks, and Thomas Chippendale transformed British furniture design through his adaptation and refinement of the style. William Hogarth helped develop a theoretical foundation for Rococo beauty. Though not intentionally referencing the movement, he argued in his ''Analysis of Beauty'' (1753) that the undulating lines and S-curves prominent in Rococo were the basis for grace and beauty in art or nature (unlike the straight line or the circle in Classicism). The development of Rococo in Great Britain is considered to have been connected with the revival of interest in Gothic architecture early in the 18th century. The beginning of the end for Rococo came in the early 1760s as figures like Voltaire and Jacques-François Blondel began to voice their criticism of the superficiality and degeneracy of the art. Blondel decried the "ridiculous jumble of shells, dragons, reeds, palm-trees and plants" in contemporary interiors.〔()〕 By 1785, Rococo had passed out of fashion in France, replaced by the order and seriousness of Neoclassical artists like Jacques-Louis David. In Germany, late 18th century Rococo was ridiculed as ''Zopf und Perücke'' ("pigtail and periwig"), and this phase is sometimes referred to as ''Zopfstil''. Rococo remained popular in the provinces and in Italy, until the second phase of neoclassicism, "Empire style", arrived with Napoleonic governments and swept Rococo away. There was a renewed interest in the Rococo style between 1820 and 1870. The British were among the first to revive the "Louis XIV style" as it was miscalled at first, and paid inflated prices for second-hand Rococo luxury goods that could scarcely be sold in Paris. But prominent artists like Eugène Delacroix and patrons like Empress Eugénie also rediscovered the value of grace and playfulness in art and design. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Rococo」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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