(H/B) ROCOCO
THE CONTINUING CURVE, 1730-2008 - ΣΥΛΛΟΓΙΚΟ

The stylistic movement known as rococo, which began in eighteenth-century France, has infused design objects with a sinuous, organic, and sensuous impulse for three centuries. Rococo dominated French design from 1730 to 1765, during the reign of Louis XV, turning away from the constraints of classicism toward nature for models, celebrating the tactile as well as the visual, the fantastical over the intellectual. Rococo design ideas, transmitted by decorative-arts prints, objects, and the traveling designers themselves, quickly spread to England, the Netherlands, the German states, the Iberian Peninsula, Italy, and America. The rococo impulse went underground during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, then resurfaced in England under the flamboyant George IV and in France during the Second Empire. Rococo's most significant revival occurred when designers found inspiration in the rococo aesthetic for a new design concept known as Art Nouveau. While the austerity of modernism dominated design during the twentieth century, designers continually returned to organic, natural curves as a source of inspiration. In the twenty-first century, the rococo spirit has burst forth once again as a creative force. Published in conjunction with a major exhibition at the Smithsonian's Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum in New York, "Rococo: The Continuing Curve, 1730-2008", featuring fourteen accessible essays by major international scholars and more than 380 full-color illustrations, places the exuberant movement within the historic continuum, bringing together an unprecedented collection of designers and objects of different eras to celebrate the joyful and liberating spirit of rococo. (From the publisher)