Rather than accentuating his radicalism, the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s new exhibition makes Jacques-Louis David a compelling case study in opportunism and survival.
Jacques-Louis David
Posted inNews
David’s Painting of Eminent Scientists Depicted Them as More Elite Than Revolutionary
The original composition showed the chemists “as wealthy tax collectors and fashionable luxury consumers rather than as the progressive and scientifically minded couple that define the portrait today.”
Posted inArt
Kehinde Wiley Seizes the Throne
Wiley shows us that a Black man can indeed take the place of Napoleon.
Posted inNews
National Gallery of Canada Plans to Sell a Chagall So It Can Buy a Jacques-Louis David [UPDATED]
The museum wants to prevent the David from leaving Canada — but it may face a bidding war with other Canadian museums.
Posted inArt
Fooling Around With Art History, on Lunch Break
When most people are bored at work, they surf Facebook. Not so with Francesco Fragomeni and Chris Limbrick, two employees at the website creation startup Squarespace who funneled their creative energy into photographic homages to the art historical canon.
Posted inNews
Metropolitan Museum Snaps Up an Unrecognized David Drawing for $700
What happens when you get the best art historians, curators, and conservators together in a single museum? Well, you’re pretty likely to get the best deals in the art world, as the Metropolitan Museum just did when it snagged a Jacques-Louis David drawing for $700 ($840 with premium).
Posted inArt
Louvre’s Men in Yellow
Paris — I’m traveling today, so there may be less posts than usual but I couldn’t resist sharing one of the games I love to play in museums. I choose a theme, topic, color or some other attribute and walk through finding it in the collection.
Posted inOpinion
Julian Assange Is a 21st Century Marat
An Australian internet activist named Julian Assange (bio) exposes top secret American diplomacy on an international website.
He’s profiled last June in The New Yorker by Raffi Khatchadourian, photographed by Phillip Toledano, has a warrant issued for rape in Sweden, he’s denial bailed in the UK, and the right-wing American politicians (which is almost all of them, nowadays) want him to be tried for treason.
Yes, this must be the 21st Century.
Why am I reminded of Jacques-Louis David’s “The Death of Marat” (1793)? Probably because there is a faction in the world today who is trying to martyr Assange as a prophet of the new flesh, though so far they’re losing.
