This is an independent study developed from the RCGA Study Abroad Grant research project.
This research aims to examine the role of gardens in the French society during the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century, and hence their influences from and on the political, artistic and social aspects of France. The central question of this research is whether French gardens served mainly as an exclusive symbol of power in France, an inclusive representation of French understanding of art in daily life, or a combination of both political development and cultural values that forms a unique French identity.
During and after my year abroad in Paris, I traveled to different gardens in France, Britain and Germany, as well as researched on both the gardens and the histories behind the gardens. Combining with my concurrent study in the royal history of France, I observed that among the different shaping powers of the garden designs such as the baroque aesthetics and Renaissance philosophies, the political intentions of royal powers to express and to enhance power took a dominant role in determining the architectural designs and structure in the formal French gardens. The development of the formal style and the transition between the formal style and landscape styles also correspond generally with a rising and declining concentration of royal power between François I to Louis XVI in France.
My independent study, and this poster, aims to analyze the visual transition of garden with the timeline of political and philosophical changes behind it.
