Academism

Academism is both a style and a system of artistic education that formed around the European academies of art from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century, codifying a strict hierarchy of genres, canons and technical rules. Its aesthetic ideal is a measured beauty grounded in the study of antique sculpture and the legacy of the High Renaissance masters, above all Raphael. An academic work is marked by impeccable drawing, careful modeling of volume through chiaroscuro, a smooth, almost invisible handling of the brushstroke, and a balanced, often pyramidal composition. At the summit of the genre hierarchy stood history painting — scenes from mythology, religion and ancient history — while portrait, genre, landscape and still life ranked below. Precise anatomy, linear perspective and the idealization of nature, smoothing away the accidental and elevating the exemplary, were obligatory. The leading masters of academism were Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, William Bouguereau and Alexandre Cabanel, The Ukrainian academic tradition is represented by Volodymyr Borovikovsky, a native of Myrhorod. The fate of many Ukrainian artists is also bound to the Imperial Academy of Arts, notably Taras Shevchenko, who received his professional training there. In the later nineteenth century academism was criticized by realists and impressionists for its cold convention and detachment from modern life, and the term "salon art" acquired an ironic tinge. Yet the academic school of drawing remains to this day the foundation of an artist's professional formation.