The Art of Pleasure

Rococo is often dismissed as frivolous, but its appeal runs deeper:

• It shifted art's focus from divine spectacle to intimate human pleasure
• Watteau's fêtes galantes slipped melancholy into beauty — parties that know they're ending
• Fragonard's The Swing became the era's defining image of playful scandal
• Its porcelain, furniture, and interiors reached unmatched craftsmanship
• Neoclassicists rejected it as a class critique — revolutionaries saw it as the art of a doomed aristocracy

Rococo was the art of a class living on borrowed time.