The Classic/Romantic Model for Understanding Artistic Temperament

During my first or second year studying the history of art, I experienced one of those moments in which the discrete bits of knowledge I’d been acquiring in my courses suddenly congealed and connected to the larger context of human experience. Specifically, I began to consider that stylistic notions of Romanticism and Classicism as they had been taught in art history were not just artistic movements, styles, or even broader attitudes toward the nature and purpose of art. They were individual temperaments through which artists see the world, and artists throughout history—not just those of the late-eighteenth or early-nineteenth centuries—were all either classical or romantic.

As I dwelled on this idea, I came to think of these concepts not as polar opposites, but as zones on a continuum. It was intriguing to ask where I thought different artists fit on this spectrum, whether toward one end or the other, extremely (like David or Delacroix), or ambiguously in-between (like Degas). In time, my thinking matured, and I realized that art and artists are more complex than simple schemas can accommodate. But that mental model helped me organize my thoughts and understand not just artists, but people, in a way that was clarifying and systematic.

Explore whether traditional notions of "classic" and "romantic" are accurate models for understanding artists’ temperaments or mindsets, or whether they misrepresent artistic nature. To what artists might this model apply, either in ways that clarify or ways that distort? What artists or entire cultures might fall outside this model or defy it (if any)? If applicable, consider how the classic/romantic schema relates to other dichotomies such as Apollonian/Dionysian, the Ancients and the Moderns, or the like.