return to order

The return to order (French: retour à l'ordre) was a European art movement following the First World War that rejected the extreme avant-garde art of the years up to 1918 and emphasized the classical ideals of order and rationality. The movement is often thought to be a reaction to the war, though strands of the return to order began before its outbreak, such as the Noucentisme movement in Spain. Futurism, which had praised machinery, dynamism, violence and war, was rejected by most of its adherents. The return to order was associated with a revival of classicism and representational painting. Among the many artists who participated in the movement were notable figures in modernism such as Picasso, Braque, Matisse, Cezanne, Renoir, and many of the Italian Futurists. Artists of the return to order placed high emphasis on the classical ideals of rationality, quality of line, illusionism and order, in opposition to the preceding decades of irrationality and emotional turbulence which characterised the artworks of the avant-garde. Although taking classicism as its foundational inspiration, artists were keen to reinterpret the essence of classical art through the lens of modernism, and a link was often made between the idealism of the classical period and the "Plastic-like" art of the modern era.¶

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return to order is European art movement, according to the structured record cited below. This entry was generated automatically from that record and has not yet been reviewed by a person familiar with the tradition.¹¶

The source record links this tradition to 2 external registers, which can be verified through the citation.¹¶