在艺术领域，古典主义通常是指对一个古典时期，即西方传统中的古典时代的一种高度评价，作为古典学者试图模仿审美的设置标准。古典主义通常寻求正式而又保守的艺术：掷铁饼者肯尼斯·克拉克爵士评论，“如果我们反对他的限制和压迫，我们只是在反对经典艺术的古典主义。激烈的强调或律动的突然加速可能会破坏这些特质的平衡和完整，直到本世纪，通过它所保留在视觉图像的受限制曲目中它的权威的地位。”克拉克指出的古典主义意味着一个被广泛接受的理想形式的标准，无论是在他正在调查的《波列罗》(1956)中的西方标准中，还是在中国古典典籍或中国艺术中，经典主义的复古也是传统特色。古典主义是经常存在于后中世纪的欧洲和欧洲传统影响中的一股力量；然而，一段时间认为他们自己比其他人与古典理想主义联系得更加紧密，尤其是在启蒙时代。

Classicism, in the arts, refers generally to a high regard for a classical period, classical antiquity in the Western tradition, as setting standards for taste which the classicists seek to emulate. The art of classicism typically seeks to be formal and restrained: of the Discobolus Sir Kenneth Clark observed, "if we object to his restraint and compression we are simply objecting to the classicism of classic art. A violent emphasis or a sudden acceleration of rhythmic movement would have destroyed those qualities of balance and completeness through which it retained until the present century its position of authority in the restricted repertoire of visual images." Classicism, as Clark noted, implies a canon of widely accepted ideal forms, whether in the Western canon that he was examining in The Nude (1956), or the literary Chinese classics or Chinese art, where the revival of classic styles is also a recurring feature.