Rococo: Travel, Pleasure, Madness

The first episode is on travel in the 18th Century, and how it impacted greatly on some of the finest art ever made. The world was getting smaller, and took on new influences shown in the glorious Bavarian pilgrimage architecture, Canaletto's romantic Venice, and the blossoming of exotic designs and tastes all over Europe, the Rococo was art expressing itself in new, exciting ways.

In the second episode, Waldemar will look at Pleasure in the Rococo age. A huge amount of Rococo's cultural energy was devoted to the pursuit of pleasure. For the first time in history, pleasure and happiness were seen as unalienable human rights that everyone was free to pursue and is reflected so poignantly in the art of Boucher, Watteau, Gainsborough, and Tiepolo. In its boundless search for delight it often went too far, but put crudely, Rococo art stopped tasting like medicine and started tasting like cakes.

The third episode will focus on the Rococo's descent into madness. When you spend as much time as the Rococo did having fun and escaping reality, madness soon sets in. The 18th Century is seen as the era of frivolity and enjoyment, but in an age of such decadence, we also saw the brutish satire of Hogarth, the mysterious masked figures of Longhi, the anguish of Messerschmidt, and the depths of Goya's macabre genius.