Romantic Idealism in Flamenco Culture: Myth, Modernity and Sadness

Abstract

Nobody would speak of flamenco today as a pure art. However, this discipline can not be understood, if we do not pay attention to what the constant search for an ideal has been at different moments of its artistic construction. Defending its purity has meant on many occasions, not speaking strictly of an art without mixtures, but the defense of a humanistic ideal. Forgetting this longing for idealized culture and its main representatives means forgetting the romantic nature of this artistic manifestation and those who have been shaping its aesthetic dimension over the years.

When many of the postulates of traditional flamencology have been overcome, we consider the need to critically review the importance of myth. We consider from a new perspective, especially from the idealist revolution that inundates art and literature at the end of the 19th century, how the constant search for an ideal has enriched and dignified flamenco reality and has made it a model of idealized culture, without this having meant distancing oneself from the stage or losing contact with other artistic disciplines.