In the arts, high regard for classical antiquity sets standards for a taste that the classicist tries to imitate. Romanticism is often compared to Classicism. In Friedrich Nietzsche’s words, the goal of Classicism is to be formal, restrained, and Apollonian (nothing too much) rather than Dionysiac (too much).

It can also be used to talk about the other Classical periods. In theater, French playwrights in the 17th century took what they thought were the rules of classical Greek theater, such as the Classical unities of time, place, and action, and made them their own.