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6 or 12 classes
Classical, Renaissance, Neo-Classical… century after century, the periodic return to clarity and order. You could think of them as the bread in a vast club sandwich, with the stronger flavors of Gothic, Baroque, and Romantic as the fillings. But why does the cycle repeat? Is it just the need to cleanse the palate? Is it the return of the arts to their ancient roots? Or simply the working-out of that battle between Dionysus and Apollo that Nietzsche saw as central to the act of creation?
The 6-week course would concentrate on the various species of classicism shown on the previous page. The 12-week one would also consider the moments of transition, the periods of excess, as it were, that made the cleanness of the classical style an aesthetic necessity: late Gothic, Baroque, high Romanticism, and the stylistic explosions of the early 1900s.