The age in which the modern world was born.
The Rococo was the art movement that followed the Baroque,and the common reaction to it today is to see it as a decline in seriousness: adescent into frippery, decoration and corruption. In 19th century Britain, before the term ‘Rococo’ achieved global usage, it was known as ‘the French style’, and looked down as a slide into mindless ornamentality and absurd foreign pretention. Waldemar Januszczak disagrees. As the follow-up to his award-winning series on the Baroque, Waldemar will argue that the Rococo age was actually the age in which the modern world was born. Picking three key territories of Rococo achievement – Travel, Pleasure and Doubt – Waldemar will celebrate the finest cultural achievements of the period and examine the drives and underlying meanings which make them so prescient.
