The Nouveau Rococo

Words by Rebecca Freezer

Rococo was an artistic movement that emerged in France during the 1720s and shone bright as the predominant design style across Europe until its decline in the 1770s. Characterised, primarily, by opulence, eroticism and whimsy, these principles were achieved by dense, curved, intricate and asymmetric ornamentation; the use of natural motifs; romantic and erotic subject matter; and the application of gilding with white and pastel colours. It was a style developed by craftspeople and designers, which created not only a breakdown in the hierarchy of artistic genres but also a blurring of the line between painting and the decorative arts. The style is often denigrated for representing courtly excess and unnecessary frivolity, yet it remains a significant epoch to these four contemporary Australian artists: Ebony Russell (NSW), Michael Carney (SA), David Ray (VIC) and Leah Emery (QLD). Three ceramicists and a textile artist, who each bring a distinct interpretation of craft-based materials and techniques. Collectively they highlight how the legacy of Rococo is relevant today.

Ebony Russell

French painter Jean-Antoine Watteau perhaps verbalised the ethos of Rococo best by his statement:

In my view you must either do away with ornament or make ornament the essence. It’s not something you add. It’s not icing on a cake. It’s everything – or it’s nothing.[i]

For Sydney-based artist Ebony Russell, her ceramic concoctions are entirely the icing on a cake. Russell uses piping – a technique usually reserved for the cake decorating craft of royal icing – to create her canyons, candelabras, grottos and tiaras. By making the decorative details the foundation of the form, the work rebuffs “the historical discrimination of decoration.”[ii] An ode to excess, made wholeheartedly of ornamentation, Russell embraces the underlying feminine-coded attributes of the Rococo and in doing so, challenges the dismissal of the art movement on this basis. The 2019 series Piped Dreams is a whimsical exploration of nostalgia and desire. The labour-intensive process which creates soft curves, whips and peaks realised in a white and pastel pink palette sprinkled with gilded droplets allows moments of reverie and delight for both the artist and the viewer.

The rippling and placement of Russell’s piped porcelain also brings to mind Rococo’s origins in rocaille – a method of decoration using carved seashells and pebbles found in follies and grottos. The work Piped Dreams: Angel Face Grotto, 2019 is an abundance of undulating curves and twists, as well as a diorama of delicately slip-cast Rococo motifs: flowers, birds, ribbons and cherubic faces. Here, Russell also references the ruffled cuffs; dainty bows and blown out silhouettes of 18th century fashions one might see depicted in another defining object during the Rococo period- the porcelain figure. Originally made in the town of Meissen, Germany in the early 18th century, Meissen porcelain was the first hard-paste porcelain to be produced outside of China. Just as Russell now fabricates everlasting cake-icing, the Meissen porcelain figures were permanent versions of the sugar banquet table ornaments of the time. Meissen’s principal modeller Johann Joachim Kandler created small-scale figurines depicting mythological, theatrical, pastoral, city street and court life scenes. Meissen’s porcelain designs became the prototypes for many porcelain manufacturers like Chelsea, Derby and Bow Porcelain in England and France’s Sevres Porcelain Factory. These producers are not only synonymous with Rococo objets d’art but the latter continues to operate today.

Previous to the European invention of hard-paste porcelain, pieces of imported Chinese porcelain, often from the city of Jingdezhen, were mounted on ormolu (gilded bronze) settings for display on mantles, tables or consoles. Russell has incorporated Jingdezhen porcelain in Angel Face Grotto, a material she became familiar with while on a residency in the region in 2019.

Michael Carney

Another artist whose practice is rooted in the context of traditional Chinese ceramic-making is current JamFactory Associate, Michael Carney. Like Russell, Carney completed a residency in Jingdezhen (2017) and uses a ‘super white’ kaolin sourced from the porcelain capital to create his vessels.

Carney’s aptly titled Rococo, 2017 is a smoothly finished, clear-glazed, lidded porcelain vase that is named after its stylistic details. At its front, the work features an open basket weave, often included in vessels of the period, which would contain scented potpourri. Across its surface it is encrusted with asymmetrical white rocailles (fleshy scrolls from which the word Rococo is derived) and decorated with curvy, Chinoiserie-style floral motifs in cobalt blue and pewter lustre.

The term Chinoiserie applies to the direct imitation and adaptation of Chinese imagery. From floral designs to depictions of exotic architecture and mythical beasts, like dragons, Chinoiserie was emblematic of all that was strange and fanciful about the East. These motifs peaked throughout the decorative arts of the mid-eighteenth century, as trade between Europe and East Asia grew exponentially. It must also be acknowledged that the basis for using Chinese-style motifs lay less in the appreciation of Chinese Art, but more in its stylistic merits considered through a longing for exoticism. Rightly or wrongly, Chinoiserie is strongly part of the language of Rococo ornament and Carney’s contemporary vessel is a nod to this pastiche of Chinese visual culture.

Another element that connects Carney’s work so firmly with rococo is his employment of asymmetrical rocailles. Yet, look more closely and you will notice that they are not the delicately curved auricular scrolls you would anticipate, but rather clay off-cuts, scraped from the hand-carved basket at the centre of the form. The scraps are thumbed back onto the surface like discarded chewing gum, signalling imperfection and a slapdash punk aesthetic. The shape of the form itself sits somewhere between an urn and a chamber pot. Carney, who is also an accomplished painter, often plays with the aesthetics and philosophies of decadence and decay throughout his chosen media. In Rococo, Carney marries methodical creation with spontaneous deconstruction. His decision to emulate the shapes and decorative motifs associated with the rococo style, allows the greatest contrast to his ruinous gestures. He refers to these opposing elements as “historical aesthetics in flux”.

David Ray

As Carney explores the complex relationship between opulence and deterioration, Yarra Valley artist David Ray challenges the duality of beauty and ugliness through his hand-built ceramics. Ray describes his ceramics as “intentionally imperfect,”[iii] as he defies conventional making techniques. His utilisation of earthenware maintains an unrefined surface, creating an informality in each of his objects.

The design style of Rococo is referenced throughout Ray’s significant 25 year oeuvre, which provides wry commentary on contemporary consumerism and the less celebrated aspects of Australian cultural life. Yet, no better is the Rococo spirit epitomised than in one of his earlier works Dream Tureen, 2000. In a mishmash of pastel colours with bold splashes of brightness, a decollated Marie Antoinette beams gracefully above a lustred cartouche containing both a painted Japonisme scene and a portrayal of Jean Honore Fragonard’s erotically-charged 1767 painting, The Swing. This Rococo masterpiece was custom-made to satisfy the baron who commissioned it to portray a naughty tableau: a woman with mischief in her eyes, in a lacy gown and silk stockings, is propelled into the air on a velvet-cushioned swing by an older, smiling man. As one of her shoes ejects from the tip of her dainty foot into the sunlit canopy, another man, hiding in the bushes, eagerly peaks up the woman’s petticoats. In Ray’s version, rather than the gentleman catching the swinging maiden’s slipper, he catches a glimpse of her freed nipple (!) This theme of voyeurism extends to a letterbox peep hole to the swinging woman’s left. Here, a shady figure peers out from behind a tree. Moulded in relief with continuous combined rococo motifs such as c-scrolls, curvilinear acanthus leaves and bird cages, the work is mounted atop four bundles of fleshy female thighs. Dream Tureen is equal parts parody of and homage to Rococo. By poking fun at its frivolity and carnal leanings, Ray captures the movement’s sense of informality, intimacy and its pursuit of pleasure.

Leah Emery

As Ray revealed in Dream Tureen, eroticism was a defining element of the Rococo genre, particularly with French artists like Fragonard but also Francois Boucher who, arguably, is the artist most closely associated with the Rococo style. A prolific artist who achieved the two highest honours among the French art establishment, he was appointed as first painter to the king and head of The Royal Academy. Boucher moved between diverse idioms, media and subject categories and provided designs for all manner of decorative arts, from porcelain to tapestry. He was also the master of the light-hearted yet sexually charged scene which became so prominent during the Rococo era.

Adelaide-born and Brisbane-based artist Leah Emery, much like Boucher, explores sex and intimacy with candour, humour and flamboyance. Emery’s chosen medium - the genteel, domestic craft of cross-stitch embroidery achieves maximum contrast with her subject matter - the confrontational world of hard-core pornography. There’s a graphic explicitness and an implied voyeurism in the art of both Emery and Boucher, yet at the same time, they share an enjoyment of the colours, patterns and surface textures they create.

In Emery’s under-water 2015 series It’s Going Swimmingly, she depicts couples wearing diving equipment and engaging in sexual acts. Scuba masks on and legs akimbo! The cross-stitched medium creates a pixelated effect when viewed at a close range as a means to blur the explicit scenes and to reduce the shock value of the imagery. In this body of work in particular, there’s an echo of Boucher’s mythological human-seascape painting Triumph of Venus, 1740, which portrays the goddess Venus after her birth from seafoam. The goddess is accompanied by water nymphs, tritons (mermen) and cherubic putti. Like Emery’s needlepoint series, the aquatic scene is saturated with eroticism, a sea of flesh set against cool-tones and an asymmetrical unfurling of limbs. The series of interlocking arabesques that create a dynamic, pyramidal composition is comparable especially to Emery’s It’s Going Swimmingly #3, 2015. Emery describes her practice as “packaging difficult content in a shell of mirth and whimsy.”[iv] What greater expression could be used to describe the Rococo style itself?

Gilded linings

A soft hedonism reigns supreme throughout the work of these four artists but where frivolous displays of extravagance and privilege were Rococo’s raison-d’etre, these contemporary artists remain reflective of our current cultural mood. The intricate and elaborate nature of each of these works spring from a desire to bring meaning to the world around us: art as narrative or symbol. We might find it difficult to take much about the Rococo seriously right now, but in times like these we also need sensuous, consoling, decorative art. Moreover, these works remind us of the ability – so fundamental to life – to see that things can be silly and serious at the same time.

ebonyrussell.com now represented by Artereal Gallery artereal.com.au/artist/ebony-russell/
michaelcarneyart.com
davidray.com.au
leahemeryart.com

[i] Perl, Jed, Antoine’s Alphabet: Watteau and His World. New York: Vintage. 2011. p.131.
[ii] https://artereal.com.au/online-exhibition/ott/
[iii] http://www.davidray.com.au/about/
[iv] https://artisan.org.au/blogs/artisan-journal/brisbane-artist-leah-emery-s-talk-to-us-about-still-lyfe-and-her-practice