| Chains: David, Canova, and the Fall of the Public Hero in Postrevolutionary France Contributor(s): Padiyar, Satish (Author) |
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ISBN: 0271029633 ISBN-13: 9780271029634 Publisher: Penn State University Press OUR PRICE: $84.10 Product Type: Hardcover Published: August 2007 Annotation: One of Jacques-Louis Davids most ambitious and darkly enigmatic paintings, Leonidas at the Pass of Thermopylae, hangs today in the Louvre, largely ignored. Focusing on this painting, Chains embarks on a discourse about the perception of the body, sexuality, and subjectivity in early nineteenth-century European art. In addition to David, Chains explores the sculptural oeuvre of Davids contemporary and rival, Italian sculptor Antonio Canova. Padiyar argues that, like Davids postrevolutionary work, Canovas innovative sculptures embodied a new, distinctively modern type of subjectivity. The book aims to take a fresh view of the status of the male body in the work of these two late neoclassical artists by linking them in novel, sometimes unexpected ways with key figures of the late Enlightenment. In postrevolutionary Europe, philosophical and literary figures such as Immanuel Kant and the Marquis de Sade pushed the language of neoclassicism to its limits. Chains argues that such innovations produced a new, distinctively sexed, politicized, and aestheticized heroic male body that emerged as an incidental aftereffect of the French Revolution. |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Art | Sculpture & Installation - Art | Criticism & Theory - Art | History - Baroque & Rococo |
| Dewey: 709.440 |
| LCCN: 2006031929 |
| Physical Information: 0.87" H x 9.31" W x 10.19" (2.71 lbs) 240 pages |
| Themes: - Cultural Region - French - Chronological Period - 19th Century |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: One of Jacques-Louis David's most ambitious and darkly enigmatic paintings, Leonidas at the Pass of Thermopylae, hangs today in the Louvre, largely ignored. Focusing on this painting, Chains embarks on a discourse about the perception of the body, sexuality, and subjectivity in early nineteenth-century European art. In addition to David, Chains explores the sculptural oeuvre of David's contemporary and rival, Italian sculptor Antonio Canova. Padiyar argues that, like David's postrevolutionary work, Canova's innovative sculptures embodied a new, distinctively modern type of subjectivity. The book aims to take a fresh view of the status of the male body in the work of these two late neoclassical artists by linking them in novel, sometimes unexpected ways with key figures of the late Enlightenment. In postrevolutionary Europe, philosophical and literary figures such as Immanuel Kant and the Marquis de Sade pushed the language of neoclassicism to its limits. Chains argues that such innovations produced a new, distinctively sexed, politicized, and aestheticized heroic male body that emerged as an incidental aftereffect of the French Revolution. |
Contributor Bio(s): Padiyar, Satish: - Satish Padiyar is an Honorary Research Fellow at University College London. He is an Associate Research Scholar at The Courtauld Institute of Art, London, where he teaches eighteenth- and nineteenth-century French art. |
