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Romanticism In The Raft Of The Medusa

Decent Essays

Romanticism, like most artistic movements, can best be understood when juxtaposed with history. It was a time of uprisings and conflicts, of liberal thought and confrontation—and the winds of change swept away everyone and everything, from monarchies and governments to French farmers and salon owners. A new way of thinking and looking at the world was proposed; the shift revealed itself in the works of new artistic masters who broke out onto the scene, shocking the critics and the public (mostly bourgeois, old masters, and nobles) with their new styles that approached art in a way that challenged all traditions. Such changes can be tracked from the mass of altered techniques and change of focus, usually very manifest in most paintings, and …show more content…

His “The Raft of the Medusa” was a complete shock to society, depicting a maritime tragedy that was hugely controversial at the time—a counterpart of the Korean Sewol incident, one may say. Even today, if it were announced that a major artist drew the victims of the Sewol incident in explicit detail and expressive finesse, the public would deem it quite shocking and disputable. His works, thus, must have been a challenge to the artistic world, in that their subjects were worldly, recent, and traditionally untouched, being usually deemed unworthy of, or too explicit for such aesthetic …show more content…

His then-unorthodox landscape paintings not only are touching to the eye and the heart, but also provide much food for thought and deep contemplation. If you take a look at several of Friedrich’s works, you’ll be able to discover that most of those landscapes include the back(s) of one or several people, who, like us, are peering over the panorama. The structure allows us to (1) put ourselves into that person’s viewpoint, as if we were on that very site, feeling the winds brushing our faces and carrying smell of the open air, and (2) wonder what worries or thoughts are occupying that person’s

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