Neo-Grec
May 28, 2009 by blogtopia
Filed under Architectural style
Neo-Grec is a term referring to late manifestations of Neoclassicism, early Neo-Renaissance now called the Greek Revival style, which was popularized in architecture, the decorative arts, and in painting during France’s Second Empire, or the reign of Napoleon III, a period that lasted approximately between 1848 and 1865. It was one of many "Revival styles" of the mid to late 19th century, and just one among several concurrent modes of Classicism. The Neo-Grec vogue took as its starting point the earlier expressions of the Neoclassical style inspired by 18th-century excavations at Pompeii, which resumed in earnest in 1848, and similar excavations at Herculaneum.
In architecture the Neo-Grec is not always clearly distinguishable from the Neoclassical designs of the earlier part of the century, in buildings such as the Church of the Madeleine, Paris. The classic example of Neo-Grec architecture is Henri Labrouste’s innovative Bibliothèque Sainte Genevieve in Paris, 1843-50, generally seen as the first major public building in this later mode of classicism.
Not only was the Neo-Grec popular in France, but also in Victorian England and especially in the United States, where its severity accorded with the "American Renaissance". The architectural historian Neil Levine has explained the style as a reaction against the rigidity of classicism. According to Levine, Neo-Grec was a somewhat looser style, which "replaced the rhetorical form of classical architectural discourse by a more literal and descriptive syntax of form." It was meant to be a "readable" architecture.