%0 Journal Article
%T Last Words: David's Mars Disarmed by Venus and the Graces (1824). Subjectivity, Death, and Postrevolutionary Late Style
%A Padiyar
%A Satish
%J RIHA Journal
%D 2011
%I 
%X 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.
%K Late style
%K Postrevolutionary
%K Neoclassical
%K Death
%K History painting
%K Exile
%K French Revolution
%K Beau ideal
%U http://www.riha-journal.org/articles/2011/2011-apr-jun/padiyar-last-words