Return to order

also: retour à l'ordre · rappel à l'ordre

movement c. 1918-1930 France Europe

The return to order (retour à l'ordre) was the turn European art took after the First World War, when artists who had led the avant-garde rejected its extremes for the classical ideals of order and rationality. The impulse was not purely post-war: Spain's Noucentisme and other classicizing strands began before 1918, and many Futurists abandoned their cult of machinery and violence. What emerged was a revival of classicism and representational painting, but one seen through modernism - classical subjects and techniques carrying modernist simplification and ambiguity. The Roman magazine Valori plastici (1918-1922) encouraged and reflected the change, and the movement took its name from Le rappel à l'ordre, the 1926 essay collection by Jean Cocteau. Picasso, Derain, Braque, de Chirico, and Casorati were among its notable artists.

Example work related to "Return to order".
Example work related to "Return to order".Public domain (credit: André Derain) · source

Defining characteristics

  • Return to clear, sculptural figuration after Cubist and Futurist fragmentation
  • Classical ideals of order, balance, and rational composition
  • Emphasis on quality of line: crisp contour and drawn structure
  • Illusionistic, representational modeling of the human figure
  • Classical and mythological subjects rendered with modernist simplification
  • Cool, still, often melancholic mood replacing avant-garde dynamism

Key figures

  • Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) — Neoclassical figure paintings of the early 1920s defined the movement's look
  • André Derain (1880-1954) — Left Fauvism for a sober classicism of clear line and calm form
  • Georges Braque (1882-1963) — Moved from Cubism toward restrained, classical clarity
  • Giorgio de Chirico (1888-1978) — Metaphysical painter whose enigmatic classicism fed the new classicism
  • Jean Cocteau (1889-1963) — Poet whose 1926 essay collection Le rappel à l'ordre named the movement

Example works

  • Two Women Running on the Beach (The Race) — Pablo Picasso (1922)
  • Pulcinella — Igor Stravinsky (music), Pablo Picasso (design) (1920)

Sources

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