This strikingly original book examines the artistic and personal crisis of French painter Jacques-Louis David during the aftermath of the Reign of Terror. David, twice imprisoned, struggled to recast his artistic identity in a world of disintegrating political and cultural values. The book casts new light on the artist`s self-representations, his Sabine Women, and the importance of his unfinished portrait of Juliette Rcamier.

Necklines: The Art of Jacques-Louis David after the Terror

Arts & Photography

Lajer-Burcharth, Ewa

History & Criticism

Yale University Press

A new interpretation of the development of artistic modernity in eighteenth-century France
What can be gained from considering a painting not only as an image but also a material object? How does the painter’s own experience of the process of making matter for our understanding of both the painting and its maker? The Painter’s Touch addresses these questions to offer a radical reinterpretation of three paradigmatic French painters of the eighteenth century. In this beautifully illustrated book, Ewa Lajer-Burcharth provides close readings of the works of François Boucher, Jean-Siméon Chardin, and Jean-Honoré Fragonard, entirely recasting our understanding of these painters’ practice. Using the notion of touch, she examines the implications of their strategic investment in materiality and sheds light on the distinct contribution of painting to the culture of the Enlightenment.
Lajer-Burcharth traces how the distinct logic of these painters’ work―the operation of surface in Boucher, the deep materiality of Chardin, and the dynamic morphological structure in Fragonard―contributed to the formation of artistic identity. Through the notion of touch, she repositions these painters in the artistic culture of their time, shifting attention from institutions such as the academy and the Salon to the realms of the market, the medium, and the body. Lajer-Burcharth analyzes Boucher’s commercial tact, Chardin’s interiorized craft, and Fragonard’s materialization of eros. Foregrounding the question of experience―that of the painters and of the people they represent―she shows how painting as a medium contributed to the Enlightenment’s discourse on the self in both its individual and social functions.
By examining what paintings actually “say” in brushstrokes, texture, and paint, The Painter’s Touch transforms our understanding of the role of painting in the emergence of modernity and provides new readings of some of the most important and beloved works of art of the era.

The Painter's Touch: Boucher, Chardin, Fragonard

Princeton University Press

A new interpretation of the development of artistic modernity in eighteenth-century France\nWhat can be gained from considering a painting not only as an image but also a material object? How does the painter’s own experience of the process of making matter for our understanding of both the painting and its maker? The Painter’s Touch addresses these questions to offer a radical reinterpretation of three paradigmatic French painters of the eighteenth century. In this beautifully illustrated book, Ewa Lajer-Burcharth provides close readings of the works of François Boucher, Jean-Siméon Chardin, and Jean-Honoré Fragonard, entirely recasting our understanding of these painters’ practice. Using the notion of touch, she examines the implications of their strategic investment in materiality and sheds light on the distinct contribution of painting to the culture of the Enlightenment.\nLajer-Burcharth traces how the distinct logic of these painters’ work―the operation of surface in Boucher, the deep materiality of Chardin, and the dynamic morphological structure in Fragonard―contributed to the formation of artistic identity. Through the notion of touch, she repositions these painters in the artistic culture of their time, shifting attention from institutions such as the academy and the Salon to the realms of the market, the medium, and the body. Lajer-Burcharth analyzes Boucher’s commercial tact, Chardin’s interiorized craft, and Fragonard’s materialization of eros. Foregrounding the question of experience―that of the painters and of the people they represent―she shows how painting as a medium contributed to the Enlightenment’s discourse on the self in both its individual and social functions.\nBy examining what paintings actually “say” in brushstrokes, texture, and paint, The Painter’s Touch transforms our understanding of the role of painting in the emergence of modernity and provides new readings of some of the most important and beloved works of art of the era.

Counter Monuments: Krzysztof Wodiczko's Public Projections

Kline, Katy

Massachusetts Inst Technology

Adapted from the lecture she delivered at the Institut für Kunstkritik, Städelschule in Frankfurt am Main, Ewa Lajer-Burcharth's essay explores the dimension of self-reflexivity in the work of eighteenth-century French painter, Jean-Siméon Chardin. Focusing on the material aspects of Chardin's practice, Lajer-Burcharth asks: In what ways were Chardin's painterly procedures “his own,” and what were the implications of his possessive and personalized approach to the process of making? The author delves into these questions by examining a crucial moment in the artist's career, when he, for reasons we can only speculate about, temporarily abandoned his still life practice and turned to painting genre scenes. The essay is joined by responses from Daniel Birnbaum and Isabelle Graw, followed by the author's replies.Institut für Kunstkritik Series

Chardin Material

Sternber Pr

Janine Antoni has played a leading role in performance and installation art during the past decade. She had placed her own body at the center of her work, exploring how the body is both absent and present, visible and invisible. Part of Antoni's groundbreaking method has been to use her body both as an art object and as a functioning tool, as canvas, palette and paintbrush--she ''draws'' with a twitch of her eyelashes, ''paints'' with her hair, and ''sculpts'' blocks of fat with her teeth. On the other hand, Antoni just as often takes as her point of departure the sleeping, resting, more or less prenatal body. In Slumber, an electric encephalograph is used to record the instinctive movements of her pupils, and the resulting graphic pattern is integrated into a weaving piece the day after, which, in turn, serves as her blanket at night. The first monograph devoted to Antoni, this brilliant new volume documents the artist's major works in full color, alongside insightful essays.

Janine Antoni

WARNER, Marina

Cappellazzo, Amy

Individual Artists

Hatje Cantz Publishers & Ink Tree

Since 1980, Polish multimedia artist Krzysztof Wodiczko has presented nearly 80 large-scale projections in public spaces around the world. In 1996, he began to animate monuments and buildings with the images and voices of homeless people and other marginalized groups. The protagonists of his video installation "Guests" are illegal immigrants.

Krzysztof Wodiczko: Guests

Rajchman, John

Wodiczko, Krzysztof

Czubak, Bozena

Charta/Zacheta National Gallery Of Art

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Books by Lajer-Burcharth, Ewa