The peasant
himself is an original, rather, 'tis true, as a species than
individually, and the brilliant, fantastic, affected, violent quality of
the Rococo appealed to his rough, sturdy child's nature, just like large
capital letters. On the other hand he never sympathized with the genuine
Pigtail. The scant, niggardly dress-coat of this period was never
adopted as the prevailing costume of the people, any more than the
fashion of wearing the hair in a real pigtail, and the bare facades of
the academic Pigtail architecture never became epoch-making in popular,
architecture. The peasant only appropriated to himself the Rococo out
of the Pigtail of the last century.
We pedantic city people, on the contrary, in the outer construction of
our houses, in their joiner-like, barrack architecture with the
monotonous rows of windows, have all this time remained prisoners of the
Pigtail; but in the gaudy, whimsical decoration of our rooms, on the
other hand, we have reached the Rococo once more, and only very recently
have we begun to improve by going back to the powerful individualism of
the Renaissance--as, for instance, in many of the new streets in Munich.
There is, however, nothing adventitious about this, for, in general, a
more personal, original life is flourishing in our _bourgeoisie_ than
there was twenty years ago.
In the Rococo period there was an endless amount of portrait painting,
and this partiality to having one's picture done in oils, pastel,
engraving, in silhouette and in miniature medallion, maintained itself
throughout the entire Pigtail period.
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