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Hopefully once a week I can post some of the discussion questions that me and my class mates have been discussing in college. The below excerpt is from my essay from the class “Survey of Modern and Contemporary Art”. Check out some of the art examples and tell us what your opinion is of the period and their styles. Essentially, you will begin to understand how the many types of art create the modern existence of graphic design. Why do we use the colors or the patterns we do? This is a great way to understand graphic design and the arts. Enjoy!

When one describes the Neo-Classical period, it is evident that most of the art simply can relate to the Greek and Roman periods, but it also has new ideas and contributions that make it relative to the 18th and 19th centuries and parts of the Enlightenment. For example, take a look at the painting Socrates, by Jacques-Louis David (http://www.flickr.com/photos/elissacorsini/2346213890/). It is evident that David was trying to mix new ideals of the Neo-Classical period with that of the ancient remembrance of Socrates, an Athenian hero. A second example of mixed ideals is the sculpture of Washington in toga (http://www.flickr.com/photos/crazyneighborlady/230019770/). The face of Washington is very Neo-Classical in that it is detailed and accurate, but the body resembles Greek and Roman sculpture.

The fact that Neo-Classical is called classical is actually quite accurate. The idea that the artists need to resemble true virtue and articulate to the people that monarchy and terrible leaders are a thing of the past, they started recreating the ideas behind the Greek and Roman periods. They wanted to say that government was a good thing, not a tyranny. This idea made it classic in that it resembled many artists before them. (Thomas Buser, 1995).

To sum it up, the ideas behind the Neo-Classical time period were far more important than what meets the eye. The world was in an uproar with revolutions and society unhappiness. But when the artists, sculptors, and architects recreated what they were seeing and what they wanted to portray to society, it became evident that the arts were the most important thing in many people’s lives. Therefore, the artists relied on prior art, the Greek and Roman periods, as inspiration, but they also recreated their own ideas. The art in the Neo-Classical time period set the stage for artists to express their true ideas, whether it be about the government, nature, or human life.