Last Words: David's Mars Disarmed by Venus and the Graces (1824). Subjectivity, Death, and Postrevolutionary Late Style

RIHA Journal

关键词: Late style;    Postrevolutionary;    Neoclassical;    Death;    History painting;    Exile;    French Revolution;    Beauideal;    Jacques Louis David;    Mars désarmé par Vénus et les Grâces;   

DOI  :  

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

Completed as he was approaching death in 1825, Jacques-Louis David's final refractory history painting is an intricate summation of a life in politics and painting. The article attempts to re-interpret the canvas in relation to the dual problem of 'late style' and the condition of exile. I argue that this history painting invokes the metaphor of non-sex for the condition of exile; and as a late gesture stages an anomalous return to a pre-lapsarian eighteenth century. The painting, I conclude, reveals less the transcendent subjectivity of an artist approaching biological death, than the critical disarming of a once-radical neoclassical aesthetic itself, in its tragic late phase.

【 授权许可】

Unknown