What is the grotesque in music, literature, painting and architecture?

What is the grotesque in music, literature, painting and architecture?
What is the grotesque in music, literature, painting and architecture?

Video: What is the grotesque in music, literature, painting and architecture?

Video: What is the grotesque in music, literature, painting and architecture?
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What is the grotesque? This term is understood as a certain kind of artistic imagery based on a combination of fantasy and reality, the ugly and the beautiful, the tragic and the comic. The main factor that determines what a grotesque is is the contrast of these images. This method can be seen in both ancient and modern art, be it music, literature, architecture.

what is grotesque
what is grotesque

What is the grotesque and where did this term come from? The name itself is taken from the painting. This name was given to the painting of the walls, which was found in the so-called "grottoes". During excavations in Rome in the fifteenth-sixteenth centuries, at the place where the baths of the Roman emperor Titus had previously been, the famous Italian master Raphael and his students found an interesting painting, which they later called the term "grotesque".

In the future, this term has spread in music, architecture and literature. What is grotesque by definition? This is a type of imagery based on significant contrasting images (fantastic and real, comic and tragic, beautiful and terrible). Such images cannot be interpreted literally.

type of artistic imagery
type of artistic imagery

It was Raphael and his students who began to use this type of artistic imagery to decorate lodges in the Vatican, to paint ceilings, palaces and walls. However, let us clarify what the grotesque is in the understanding of the ancients, and was it even before the emergence of this term? In mythology, this aesthetic is often found. For example, antique motifs of sirens or harpies. It can be said with absolute certainty that the authors of such myths and works did not set themselves the task of impressing readers or listeners with grotesque images.

What is the grotesque as a technique in literature? This is a kind of combination and composition of the terrible and the funny, the sublime and the disgusting, the nightmarish and the beautiful. This is one of the methods of combining the incongruous. Its main difference from irony, humor and sarcasm is that in grotesque literature, the funny and funny are inseparable from the terrible and sinister. This style is full of hyperbole and alogisms, sometimes with elements of absurdity. It is hyperbole as a stylistic figure of deliberate exaggeration that is an integral part of this artistic style.

music literature architecture
music literature architecture

What is the grotesque in terms of its meaningfulness? Very often, such images are quite tragic and dramatic. Behind the pronounced outward fantasy and improbability, one can find the deepest artistic generalizations and elaborations of the most important life phenomena and realities. For example, such moments can be traced very clearly in Gogol's story "The Nose", in such a work as "Little Tsakhes, nicknamedZinnober" by Hoffmann.

What is the grotesque in music? In earlier times, this technique was often used during the production of operettas or operas as an element of theatrical action. To some extent, some works of avant-garde artists can be called grotesque. In modern music, it can be seen as a performance.

Speaking of the grotesque, we must also mention the architecture. For example, images of chimeras or gargoyles are good examples of grotesque art.

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