Chains: David, Canova, and the Fall of the Public Hero in Postrevolutionary France [Hardcover]

Satish Padiyar (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0271029633 | ISBN-13: 978-0271029634 | Publication Date: June 30, 2007

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.

Editorial Reviews

Review

This is an unusually intelligent and original study. It offers, by way of a detailed discussion of David's most significant and ideologically charged late painting, Leonidas at the Pass of Thermopylae, a truly novel perspective on the larger significance of new tendencies in French neoclassical painting and aesthetics in the complex and politically fraught postrevolutionary period of the early nineteenth century. --Alex Potts, University of Michigan

An outstanding work of great importance. . . . Chains uses art to make broader claims about subjectivity in general and gay subjectivity in particular that are entirely novel and provocative. --Ewa Lajer-Burcharth, Harvard University

The writings are thoughtfully arranged and the images included are mostly color. Substantive notes and an appendix enhance the text. --T.L. Wilson, Choice

About the Author

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.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 225 pages
• Publisher: Pennsylvania State Univ Pr (June 30, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0271029633
• ISBN-13: 978-0271029634
• Product Dimensions: 10.1 x 9 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,396,842 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Fascinating, Fresh Look at the Art of Neoclassicism, March 19, 2011

By 

Grady Harp (Los Angeles, CA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Chains: David, Canova, and the Fall of the Public Hero in Postrevolutionary France (Hardcover)

Satish Padiyar stirs up controversy in the best manner of the word. Many people view the period of neoclassicism as a reaction to the Revolutinary Spirit that began in France and quickly spread through the world. In this book CHAINS: DAVID, CANOVA, AND THE FALL OF THE PUBLIC HERO IN POSTREVOLUTIONARY FRANCE he divides his investigation into the following chapter titles: Heroism After the French Revolution: David's Leonidas at Thermopylae; Inheriting Greek Eros: Anacreontism and Homosexual Desire; Kant and the Postrevolutionary Subject: The Aesthetics of Freedom; Subject and Surface: Canova and the Reinvention of Classical Sculpture; and Sade/David, in Chains.

Opening with an examination of Jacques-Louis David's 1814 painting begun when David was imprisoned after the overthrow of Robespierre but not finished until 1814 - Leonidas at the Pass of Thermopylae - Padiyar explores the conflict between painter David and sculptor Canova in the manner in which they portrayed Man after in the impact of the Revolution and enters the terrain of male figure worship almost to the point of fetishism. It reads as though the courage of common man to overthrow monarchies elevated them to the mythic hero stance of the massively muscular and sensuous Greek and Roman heroes of the past. The author manages to step aside from his artist characters to also examine the writing of such diverse men as the Marquis de Sade and philosopher Immanuel Kant. It is another way of defining and describing the Enlightenment. The 'chains' are broken!

The book is amply illustrated with both full color and black and white illustrations that serve the text well. The author writes with the facility of a novelist despite the thesis-like concept he is describing. Grady Harp, March 11