Rococo. The very term has become commonplace as the synonym for "decorative," "frilly" and "frivolous" art. That in itself is a step up from its origins as a derogatory term derived from the French word rocaille. The original invention of the term in the early 1800s was essentially a caricature, a satirical disparagement which consigned the entire Rococo period (circa 1680-1775) to being little more than an architectural style of playful decoration. Likewise, our contemporary art historians and critics are rarely kind to the Rococo style - and are particularly hard on its artists. "The eighteenth century," one college text proclaims, "did not produce a single figure in the visual arts to rank with the universal masters of previous epochs." Like all such sweeping generalizations, both criticisms - new and old - miss key elements in the character of Rococo style and its artists. This is particularly so in the field of painting. Rococo painting was an important and necessary transitional period in the history of painting. Moreover, concentrating only upon the French Rococo painters,* one finds in the works of Francois Boucher and Jean-Honore Fragonard a combination of style and techniques that belie surface "frivolity" with a subtext of closely-detailed observations on human relationships, emotions and sensuality. It will be the aim of this essay to describe the necessary place Rococo style has in the evolution of painting by using the examples of Boucher and Fragonard to illustrate the (at times revolutionary) changes to which they were contributors.
What I cannot defend, unless you are willing to grant it, is the value of form as the kind of experience that goes most deeply into whatever a man is. Dance, ritual, religious ceremony, public ceremony or poetic encounter - if the form is sound, it is of what is deepest in man. Nothing is more powerfully of man than the fact that he naturally gives off forms and is naturall...