The French term ''goût grec'' (; "Greek taste") is often applied to the earliest expression of the
Neoclassical style in
France
France, officially the French Republic, is a country located primarily in Western Europe. Overseas France, Its overseas regions and territories include French Guiana in South America, Saint Pierre and Miquelon in the Atlantic Ocean#North Atlan ...
and refers specifically to the
decorative art
]
The decorative arts are arts or crafts whose aim is the design and manufacture of objects that are both Beauty, beautiful and functional. This includes most of the objects for the interiors of buildings, as well as interior design, but typical ...
s and
architecture
Architecture is the art and technique of designing and building, as distinguished from the skills associated with construction. It is both the process and the product of sketching, conceiving, planning, designing, and construction, constructi ...
of the mid-1750s to the late 1760s. The style was more fanciful than historically accurate, though the first archaeological surveys of Greece had begun to appear at this time.
[ James Stuart and Nicholas Revett's '' The Antiquities of Athens and Other Monuments of Greece'' (London, 1762) led the way.] It was characterized by severe rectilinear and
trabeated forms with a somewhat crude Greek detailing incorporating bold
pilasters
In architecture, a pilaster is both a load-bearing section of thickened wall or column integrated into a wall, and a purely decorative element in classical architecture which gives the appearance of a supporting column and articulates an ext ...
,
Ionic scrolls,
Greek key and scroll frets and
guilloche.
The style's origin may be found in the suite of furniture designed by
Louis-Joseph Le Lorrain for the Parisian financier Ange-Laurent de La Live de Jully (now in the
Musée Condé, Chantilly). In comparison to the prevailing
Rococo
Rococo, less commonly Roccoco ( , ; or ), also known as Late Baroque, is an exceptionally ornamental and dramatic style of architecture, art and decoration which combines asymmetry, scrolling curves, gilding, white and pastel colours, sculpte ...
style, the austerity of these pieces is stark, and found praise from the contemporary authority on Greek antiquity, the
Comte de Caylus. Also influential were the engravings of the architect
Jean-François de Neufforge, the architecture of
Charles De Wailly, and the designs of
Philippe de La Guêpière. The ''goût grec'' was a style of
avant-garde
In the arts and literature, the term ''avant-garde'' ( meaning or ) identifies an experimental genre or work of art, and the artist who created it, which usually is aesthetically innovative, whilst initially being ideologically unacceptable ...
circles in upper-class Paris, but was ignored at the
court at Versailles, where a more conservative, stiffened
Louis XV style and modified "Transitional" style obtained.
The ''goût grec'' was short-lived and replaced quickly with the delicate, linear (or insipid, according to preference) ''goût étrusque'' and ''goût arabesque'', neo-Etruscan and "arabesque" fashions with closer parallels in contemporary British
Adam style of the 1770s and 80s.
See also
*
Neo-Grec
Notes
References
*Svend Eriksen, ''Early Neo-Classicism in France''. (London: Faber). Translated by Peter Thornton.
Decorative arts
Architectural styles
Neoclassical architecture in France
Greek Revival architecture
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