Synopses & Reviews
The latest in a series of absorbing theoretical essays edited by the curatorial dream team of Daniel Birnbaum and Isabelle Graw. In this pocket-sized paperback, Ewa Lajer-Burcharth explores the practice and, as she attests, self-reflexive work by the 18th-century French master of the still life, Jean-Baptiste-Simeon Chardin. Lajer-Burcharth, a Guggenheim fellow and professor of the history of art and architecture at Harvard University, delves into the implications of Chardin's possessive and personalized approach to the process of painting, and asks why he abruptly stopped painting still lifes and began creating genre paintings. The essay becomes a dialog when Birnbaum and Graw respond and the author further replies. Other titles in the series include Under Pressure and Canvases and Careers.
Synopsis
Adapted from the lecture she delivered at the Institut f r Kunstkritik, St delschule in Frankfurt am Main, Ewa Lajer-Burcharth's essay explores the dimension of self-reflexivity in the work of eighteenth-century French painter, Jean-Sim on 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 f r Kunstkritik Series