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People: Étienne-Louis Boullée - Sade
Background: Enlightenment - golden age of the Grand Tour - Neoclassicism - French Revolution - Rococo
By medium 1700s literature
Girl Reclining (Louise O'Murphy) 1751 - François Boucher
Drawing by Étienne-Louis Boullée (1728 - 1799)
Marquis de Sade [...]
Donatien Alphonse François, de Sade, better known as the Marquis de Sade (pronounced "saad"; June 2, 1740 - December 2, 1814), was a French aristocrat best known as a writer of philosophy-laden pornography, as well as a some strictly philosophical works; much of his writing was done while in prison. His name is the source of the word sadism. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marquis_de_Sade [Jan 2005]
Pompeii rediscovered (1748)
See also: 1748
Dandy [...]
A dandy is a man who rejects bourgeois values, devotes particular attention to his physical appearance, refines his language, cultivates his hobbies. A dandy emulates aristocratic values, often without being an aristocrat himself, thus such a dandy is a form of snob. The practice of dandyism was a counter-cultural habit that began in the revolutionary 1790s both in London and Paris. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dandy [Sept 2004]
The origins of camp
The dividing line seems to fall in the 18th century; there the origins of Camp taste are to be found (Gothic novels, Chinoiserie, caricature, artificial ruins, and so forth.) But the relation to nature was quite different then. In the 18th century, people of taste either patronized nature (Strawberry Hill) or attempted to remake it into something artificial (Versailles). They also indefatigably patronized the past. Today's Camp taste effaces nature, or else contradicts it outright. And the relation of Camp taste to the past is extremely sentimental. --Susan SontagCulture
The 18th century first saw the development of a culture that was available to anyone prepared to buy a ticket. Before this, the aristocracy had kept all that was best in culture for itself. Now culture was there to enrich and fill the time of the newly affluent, and genteel consumers could polish themselves by visiting art galleries or museums, attending concerts or performances of Shakespeare. As pleasure became 'culture', it became increasingly important for the polite classes (many of them nouveaux riches) to distinguish between high and low entertainments. Then, as now, those most insecure about their own refinement were likeliest to be most hostile to all that might be thought 'low' or 'vulgar' (until the mid-19th century the words most commonly used for what we might call 'popular'). --John MullanFeminism [...]
Feminist thought occurred during The Enlightenment with such thinkers as Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and the Marquis de Condorcet championing women's education. The first scientific society for women was founded in Middleberg, a city in the south of the Dutch republic, in 1785. Journals for women which focused on issues like science became popular during this period as well. Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) is one of the first works that can unambiguously be called feminist, although by modern standards her comparison of women to the nobility, the elite of society, coddled, fragile, and in danger of intellectual and moral sloth, does not sound like a feminist argument. Wollstonecraft believed that both sexes contributed to this situation and took it for granted that women had considerable power over men. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_feminism [Nov 2004]Taste
The Eighteenth Century, as Raymond Williams observes, is the time when "taste" became "Taste." The powers of sensation, residing in the tongue and palate, were metaphorically transmuted into the powers of cultural discrimination and judgment. Yet, the aphoristic conviction of Williams' observations elides the fascinating and complex construction of Taste in the long eighteenth century. This was an age which produced much anxiety about Taste, anxiety which resonates in similar tones to this day. -- Discerning Taste, 1660-1800: England, France, and America by Kay Parkhurst Easson and Barbara Ching in http://asecs.press.jhu.edu/easching.html [Jun 2004]Romanticism
The Romantic movement originated in late 18th Century England, and is primarily identified with English writers such as William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. The Romantic "craze" was well known in France, though, and certainly helped to inspire some of the French crazes that would follow.Étienne-Louis Boullée (1728 - 1799)
Drawing by Étienne-Louis Boullée (1728 - 1799)
image sourced here.
Étienne-Louis Boullée (February 12, 1728 - February 6, 1799) was a French neoclassical architect whose work greatly influenced contemporary architects and is still influential today. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C9tienne-Louis_Boull%E9e [May 2005]
The Belly of an Architect
The Belly of an Architect is a 1987 movie directed by Peter Greenaway.
Original music by Glenn Branca and Wim Mertens.
The movie contains numerous references to the work of the 18th century French architect Étienne-Louis Boullée. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Belly_of_an_Architect [May 2005]
1700-1800: Sodomitical Subcultures Emerge [...]
Officials in London, Paris, and Amsterdam were shocked to learn of networks of men who spoke of their forbidden sexual practices with an unfamiliar subcultural slang and had secret meeting places and even public taverns where they met and had sex with each other. Officials in Amsterdam feared divine retribution, and enthusiastically prosecuted and executed as many sodomites as they could find. In England, many prosecutions were instigated by Puritanical moral improvement societies, but the constables there were less zealous than their Dutch counterparts. Even though the French police did not share Dutch and English religious convictions, Parisian sodomites lived in fear of prosecution since the police pioneered methods of psychological torture, entrapment, and blackmail.
Even though the three subcultures probably had little to do with each other, they bore remarkable similarities. Cross-dressing and effeminacy were an important part of subcultural life in all three cities, and sodomites increasingly came to see themselves as different from ordinary folk. Before the emergence of these early modern subcultures, sodomy was considered a grave sin that any man could commit if his sexual lust got the better of him. As knowledge of sodomitical subcultures grew throughout the 18th Century, sodomites were increasingly perceived as different in kind from men who found their pleasures with women. --©1998, Andrew Wikholm, http://www.gayhistory.com/rev2/factfiles/ffsubcultures.htm [Sept 2004]
Events
from A Biased Timeline of the Counter-Culture1700s industrialism, highways, canals, sidewalk paving first classical composers; quadrille, minuet, waltz encylopedias, museums; threshing machine, cotton gin 1700 first American protest against slavery: `The Selling of Joseph' 1712 Slave revolts, NY 1712 Last execution for witchcraft in England 1714 Prussia: witchcraft trials abolished 1715 Rising of Native American tribes in South Carolina colony 1720 First collective settlemen in Vermont (which is this?) 1727 Quakers demand abolition of slavery (1728- Freemasons start) 1733 First? [N. Eur.] conscription - Prussia 1752 Benjamin Franklin discovers electricity 1759 Voltaire: Candide 1762 Jean-Jacques Rousseau: The Social Contract 1764 James Watt invents condenser, first step toward steam engine 1775 perfects 1782 1770 First public restaurant, Paris 1772 Inquisition abolished in France 1775- 1783 INDEPENDENCE WAR OF BRITAIN'S NO AMER COLONIES 1776 Adam Smith: An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations 1777 Cooperative workshop for tailors at Birmingham 1784 first mail by coaches (London to Bristol) 1787 Shakers found Mount Lebanon, NY (which lasts until 1947) 1789 William Blake (1757-1827): Songs of Innocence 1789 FRENCH REVOLUTION Goya (1746-1828) 1791 Thomas Paine: The Rights of Man 1792 Denmark becomes first nation to abolish the slave trade Mary Wollstonecraft: Vindication of the Rights of Women 1793 start of Napoleonic wars?? 1794 William Blake: Songs of Experience 1791- 1817 Goethe writing Wilhelm Meister published 1795? 1794 Slavery abolished in the French colonies (including New Orleans? start of music?) 1795 First poor relief/dole in Britain 1797 J.M.W. Turner(1775-1851): Millbank, Moonlight (he was 22) 1798 Malthus: Essay on the Principle of Population (32) - - first generation to grow up after the French Revolution reaches their 20s - -
The 18th century in film
Films: Ridicule (1996) - Dangerous Liaisons (1988)
Jean-Jacques Lequeu
Jean-Jacques Lequeu Google gallery
see also: architecture - vision
Eighteenth-Century Popular Culture: A Selection (2000) - John Mullan (Editor), Christopher Reid (Editor)
Eighteenth-Century Popular Culture: A Selection (2000) - John Mullan (Editor), Christopher Reid (Editor) [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
See also:
John Mullan -
UK -
1700s