HANDOUT
The Heroic Body: Jacques-Louis David and French Neoclassicism
Sept. 16
History painting, the public sphere, and pre-revolutionary radicalism in France: The
case of David.
Readings:
Johnson, Dorothy. “Corporeality and Communication: Diderot, David and the ‘Oath
of the Horatii’.” Art Bulletin 71 (1989): pp. 92-113.*
Germer, Stefan, and Hubertus Kohle. “From the Theatrical to the Aesthetic Hero:
On the Privatization of the Idea of Virtue in David’s Brutus and Sabines.”
Art History 9, no. 2 (1986): pp. 168-84.*
To look at:
Exh. Cat. Jacques-Louis David, 1748-1825. Paris, 1989.
Repetition of some major aspects of Enlightenment:
•
Recommended as short, but concise introduction into this complex phenomenon:
Porter, Roy. The Enlightenment. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press
International, 1990.
•
EMPIRICISM:
in philosophy, the attitude that beliefs are to be accepted and acted upon only if
they first have been confirmed by actual experience. This broad definition accords
with the derivation of the name from the Greek word empeiria, “experience.”
More specifically, however, Empiricism comprises a pair of closely related, but
still distinct, philosophical doctrines—one pertaining to concepts and the other to
propositions. The first of these doctrines, a theory of meaning, holds that words
(e.g., the word substance) can be understood or the concepts requisite for any
articulate thought possessed only if they are connected by their users with things
that they have experienced or could experience (e.g., pieces of wood, or the gases
in a gasoline engine). The second doctrine, a philosophical theory of knowledge,
views beliefs, or at least some vital classes of beliefs (e.g., that Jane is kind), as
depending ultimately and necessarily on experience for justification (Jane is seen
performing acts of kindness). It is not obvious, however, that either of these two
doctrines strictly implies the other. Several recognized Empiricists have admitted
that there are a priori propositions but have denied that there are a priori concepts.
The reverse disconnection between the two forms of Empiricism, however, has no
obvious exponents, since there are hardly any philosophers who totally deny a
priori propositions and certainly none who would at the same time accept a priori
concepts. Stressing experience, Empiricism is thus opposed to the claims of
authority, intuition, imaginative conjecture, and abstract, theoretical, or systematic
reasoning as sources of reliable belief. Its most fundamental antithesis is with the
latter (i.e., with Rationalism, also called intellectualism or apriorism). A
Rationalist theory of meaning asserts that there are concepts not derived from or
correlated with experienceable features of the world, such as “cause,” “identity,”
or “perfect circle,” and that these concepts are a priori (Latin: “from the former”)
in the traditional sense of being part of the mind's innate or natural equipment—as
opposed to being a posteriori (Latin: “from the latter”), or grounded in the
experience of facts. On the other hand, a Rationalist theory of knowledge holds
that there are beliefs that are a priori (i.e., that depend for their justification upon
thought alone), such as the belief that everything must have a sufficient reason or
that a process cannot exist by itself but must occur within some substance. Such
beliefs can arise either from intellectual intuition, the direct apprehension of selfevident truth, or from purely deductive reasoning.
Enlightenment and Arts
Comparison Diderot and Winckelmann
•
Imitatio
•
“unspecificity” = Unbezeichnung
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“Noble simplicity and still grandeur” >> tradition of PIETISM
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istoria: expression des passions
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Spontaneity and Morality
•
quotation from Peter Gay. The Enlightenment, An Interpretation: The Rise of
Modern Paganism. 2nd ed. New York: Knopf, 1977 (1st ed: 1966), p. 47 ff.
“A striking and appealing figure, learned, talkative, energetic, changeable, inventive,
sensual, and elusive, Diderot embodies the dualism of the Enlightenment to perfection: a
partisan of empiricism and scientific method, a skeptic, a tireless experimentor and
innovator, Diderot was possessed by the restlessness of modern man.”
•
German-Parisian man of letters Friedrich Grimm.
•
1765 Short Essay on Painting (Essai sur la peinture)
”To make virtue desirable, vice odious, and absurdities evident, that is the aim of every
honest man who takes up the pen, the brush, or the chisel.” (1765, Essay on Painting)
•
harking back to Dutch 17th-century, especially the small Dutch maters
attempt of reform from within
•
reform-minded art administrators in reigns of Louis XV and Louis XVI:
1745 Lenormant de Tournehem (“uncle” of Mme. Pompadour)
1777 Count d’Angiviller:
Jacques-Louis David
1748 – 1825
•
1771 Battle between Mars and Minerva
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1772 Diana and Apollo killing the Children of Niobe
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1773 Death of Seneca
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1774 Antiochus and Stratonice
the aesthetics of contour drawing:
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outline drawing, of dessin du trait
•
_ Rosenblum, Robert. The International Style of 1800 : A Study in Linear
Abstraction, Outstanding Dissertations in the Fine Arts. New York: Garland Pub.,
1976.
Debate about political implications of David’s Oath of the Horatii
•
Thomas Crow 1978
•
Leopold Ettlinger 1967
•
Hugh Honour, 1968
Artists in alphabetical order:
Caravaggio; Chardin; David; Dou, Gerard; Flaxman; Fragonard; Giotto; Greuze;
d’Harcanville; Lagrenée, Louis-Jean-François: “Fabricius Luscinus Refusing the Gifts of
Pyrrhus, 1777”; Le Brun; Maes, Nicolas; Mengs; Hamilton; Poussin; Vien, Joseph-Marie