Arts and Culture - Romanticism

Arts and Culture

Romanticism was a period in the 1800’s when people took on a new outlook on art, music and life itself. It was a period where everything seemed to be connected to nature and emotions. Anything and everything a person created could be considered art, as long as it was original. The whole idea was that everyone created something of their own and it is original and that is art. This time was all about emotions, deep thinking, personal experience and connecting with nature. Everyone believed in the personal expression of your own truth. It can almost be described as every person was living in their own little world, lost in deep thoughts and believing in their own truth.

This is how Romanticism led to Postmodernism. During Romanticism people got used to believing in what they themselves thought was the truth and not what majority of people agreed on. Because of this artist and musicians took on a new idea of what is considered music and art. They began creating different themes for their work. When Postmodernism kicked in terms like Knowledge, Truth, Logic, Authority, Values, Ethics had no longer one meaning. People began to have different outlooks on life and valued different things. Right and Wrong became different for each individual. Each person’s opinion became equally valid. Truth became relative and knowledge uncertain.

Romanticism also led to the religious belief of Transcendentalism. During the Romantic era people were very big on the idea of connecting with nature. Everything was about connecting with nature and people believed that nature was a source of human inspiration. Therefore from this people began to express and explain things using guidelines of nature instead of logic. Transcendentalists believed that intuition and the individual conscience experience are better guides to truth than logical reason.

Some of the differences between Deism and Transcendentalism were; Deism believed that Gods relation to the world was that he was beyond the world and in it miraculously, Transcendentalism believed that God is the world. Also Deism believed that a man’s destiny was reward or punishment of the soul, Transcendentalism believed in reincarnation and merging with God. Another difference was Deism believed origin of evil came from free choice and ignorance and that nature of ethics is absolute, on the other hand Transcendentalism believed origin of evil is an illusion and nature of ethics is relative.

If I was an artist or poet who favored romanticism and perceived nature from a transcendentalist perspective, I think and example of my painting would be: during night time a man