(bouncy piano music)
>> We're in the Louvre in Paris
and we're looking at of the great
18th Century French paintings,
Pilgrimage to Cythera by Watteau.
>> Here we are looking at a Rococo painting
and the main subjects of Rococo paintings
were the lifestyle of the aristocracy.
>> Well we certainly have that.
Cythera is an island in Greece and it was
believed, perhaps, to be the birth place
of the goddess Aphrodite.
>> Cythera is an island that was mythically
associated with the goddess of love.
>> Look, the sculpture of her has Cupid's bow
tied around it and we have
a vine of roses growing up it.
You can't miss the connotations of love here.
>> No and there's a little Cupid sitting below that.
He's got his quiver on the ground,
as though he doesn't really need
to do anything here because love is
all around him already.
>> He seems to be tugging ever so gently on the
skirt of the young woman who sits there so coyly.
>> As though he's urging her to fall in love
and of course her male companion seems to be
doing the same thing, but she
looks down rather demurely.
>> It's a bit of a conspiracy, isn't it?
I'm not sure that she stands a chance.
>> As you follow the couples as they head
down the bank toward the boat that is either
going to take them away from Cythera
or to Cythera...
>> It should say that the art historians
have been arguing this point for quite some time.
>> You can see that the couples get
closer and closer toward a state of intimacy.
>> Oh, that's right.
When you look at the figures that are down below
in the middle of the painting,
you see the woman who holds the man's arm
of her own volition.
She doesn't need to be coaxed any longer.
I see this progression of figures almost as a dance.
Look at the way the hands are together as it
would be in a formal dance of the 18th Century.
You can see the prow of the ship with a
beautifully carved nude woman and above that,
what is presumably in Cupid,
there is a red silk cloth that drapes the entire prow.
We see garlands of flowers and then you can see
the oarsmen of the boat.
They're ready to take these couples
either to or from Cythera.
I tend to think that they're going to Cythera
because Watteau has made an effort
to show us a destination.
We see a dark outline and
presumably that is the island of Cythera.
>> You can see the little Puti that lead our eye
back into that distance with that torch,
right above that island in the distance.
On the other hand, there is that herm,
that sculpture of Aphrodite, that suggests that
this island that we're seeing now is itself Cythera,
the island of love, and that the figures
are nostalgically sadly getting ready to leave.
>> That's entirely possible, but I think it's
also possible that it's both.
That this is a painting that is about ambiguity
and should not be read as a literal narrative.
>> I think you're right.
Love here is represented as a dance
where couple take various positions in
relationship to one another,
sometimes moving in opposing directions,
sometimes moving together,
sometimes one pulls another toward them.
We know that Watteau was influenced by opera
and by plays so maybe we're seeing
some aspect of that here.
>> It's also important to remember that this was
painted to be the reception piece
for Watteau to be included in the
Royal Academy of Art
and it's intended audience as an aristocratic one,
one that was used to formal dance.
>> This is a new type of painting
called the fete galante,
an outdoor entertainment for the aristocracy.
>> Interestingly, Watteau was a bit late
getting this to the Academy and that was
because of private commissions that intervened,
but when it was accepted there was no
category for the fete galante.
But the painting was seen as so important
that they created a new category so that
it could be accepted and this was
rather revolutionary, especially considering
that the Academy was strongly divided
between two camps,
the followers of the artist Reubens
and the followers of the French artist Poussin.
>> That is a division between artists who
adhere to a philosophy that says
line is most important in painting,
that clear outlines and internal modeling
and that sense of finish were you don't see
the brush work is most important
versus the Reubenists, the followers of Reubens,
who believe that color was most important
and it's so clear when you look at the
luscious colors here that Watteau was an
adherent to the Reubenist ideas.
>> There's no question that the Rubeunists
carried the day at this point.
>> Absolutely and here you can see that the
outlines are soft, figures merge a little bit
into the background.
They have lovely passages where we can see
the hand of the artist.
This is something that is very typical of
Baroque Art with Reubens and also here in
Rococo Art with Watteau.
>> This a period that we call the Rococo
and it is the Enciene Regime that is
it is the last century the nobility will rule France.
>> The nobility, they were all family,
were less than a century away from
the French Revolution which will of course
annihilate this way of life literally
and usher is what we, in many ways,
consider the modern world.
>> Here we see an image of the aristocracy at play,
of this fantasy of the world they had created
for themselves, but here within a fantastical setting.
(bouncy piano music)