10 Facts About Academic art

Academic art, or academicism or academism, is a style of painting and sculpture produced under the influence of European academies of art.

Specifically, academic art is the art and artists influenced by the standards of the French Academie des Beaux-Arts, which was practiced under the movements of Neoclassicism and Romanticism, and the art that followed these two movements in the attempt to synthesize both of their styles, and which is best reflected by the paintings of William-Adolphe Bouguereau, Thomas Couture, and Hans Makart.

Academic art'storicism is meant to refer to the belief and practice associated with academic art that one should incorporate and conciliate the innovations of different traditions of art from the past.

Trend in Academic art was towards greater idealism, which is contrary to realism, in that the figures depicted were made simpler and more abstract—idealized—in order to be able to represent the ideals they stood in for.

The academic art world admired Raphael, for the ideality of his work, in fact preferring him over Michelangelo.

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In France, only students who passed an exam and carried a letter of reference from a noted professor of Academic art were accepted at the academy's school, the Ecole des Beaux-Arts.

Academic art had to have met the entrance requirements of the Ecole and have the support of a well-known art teacher.

Academic art was first criticized for its use of idealism, by Realist artists such as Gustave Courbet, as being based on idealistic cliches and representing mythical and legendary motives while contemporary social concerns were being ignored.

Since the early 1990s, academic art has even experienced a limited resurgence through the Classical Realist atelier movement.

Additionally, the art is gaining a broader appreciation by the public at large, and whereas academic paintings once would only fetch a few hundreds of dollars in auctions, some now fetch millions.