INGRES THEN, AND NOW ‘At last, here is a work on Ingres such as we no longer dared hope for: audacious, sulphurous, scandalous. Until now, Ingres has been imprisoned by his pious mythology as if by a foul swamp. The deconstruction of the artist is therefore an undertaking in the public interest, which Rifkin fulfils with a rare ingenuity. We must also note that the most despicable artist of the French school, egotistic, sexist, racist and sectarian, comes out as the hero-in-spite-of-all of this magnificently dark book. It should be its only failure!’ Régis Michel, Chief Curator at the Musée du Louvre ‘This is an unusually fine and intelligent study, which will prove compelling to anyone thinking about the nature of modern art and the situation of the modern artist in nineteenth and twentieth century France. Rifkin offers the reader an array of brilliant and unexpected insights—at times focused on Ingres, at others opening out onto new ways of thinking about modernity and the fabric of modern artistic culture.’ Alex Potts, Professor of History of Art, University of Reading Ingres Then, and Now is an innovative study of one of the best-known French artists of the nineteenth century, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres. Adrian Rifkin re-evaluates Ingres’ work in the context of a variety of literary, musical and visual cultures which are normally seen as alien to him. Reviewing Ingres’ paintings as a series of fragmentary symptoms of the commodity cultures of nineteenth-century Paris, Adrian Rifkin draws the artist away from his familiar association with the Academy and the Salon. Rifkin sets out to show how, by thinking of the historical archive as a form of the unconscious, we can renew our understanding of nineteenth-century conservative or academic cultures by reading them against their ‘other’. He situates Ingres in the world of the Parisian Arcades, and traces the emergence of bizarre symptoms in Ingres’ early work, symptoms which open him to a variety of conflicting readings and appropriations. He concludes by examining his ii importance for the great French art critic Jean Cassou on the one hand, and in making a bold, contemporary gay appropriation on the other. Ingres Then, and Now transforms the popular image we have of Ingres. It argues that the figure of the artist is fixed in neither time nor place—there is neither an essential man named Ingres, nor a singular body of his work— but is an effect of many complex and overlapping historical processes. RE VISIONS: CRITICAL STUDIES IN THE HISTORY AND THEORY OF ART Series editors: Jon Bird and Lisa Tickner Middlesex University .Art history has been transformed as an academic discipline over the last twenty years. The ‘new’ art history is no longer new, and that widely used and useful label has come to seem dangerously over-tidy. Re Visions responds to the arrival of new ways of thinking in art histoty in a series of lucid and accessible studies by authors distinguished in their fields. Each book examines the usefulness of innovative concepts and methods, not in abstract terms but through the analysis of particular art objects, ways of writing about art, and cultural institutions and practices. Other titles in the series: CIVILIZING RITUALS Inside public art museums Carol Duncan FEMINISM AND CONTEMPORARY ART The revolutionary power of women’s laughter Jo Anna Isaak DIFFERENCING THE CANON Feminist desire and the writing of art’s histories Griselda Pollock INGRES THEN, AND NOW Adrian Rifkin London and New York First published 2000 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” © 2000 Adrian Rifkin All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Rifkin, Adrian Ingres then, and now/Adrian Rifkin Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Ingres, Jean-Auguste-Dominique, 1780–1867 Criticism and interpretation. I. Title. ND553.I5R53 2000 759.4–dc21 99–42448 ISBN 0-203-97646-0 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-415-06697-2 (hbk) ISBN 0-415-06698-0 (pbk) À Denis (…et je vous admire) CONTENTS List of illustrations viii Acknowledgements xi Preliminary: from the bizarre to the sublime 1 Introduction: the formation of a palimpsest 9 1 Ingres and the Arcades 43 2 Académie, or the colour white and the childhood of art criticism 87 3 A filament in the tissues of modernity 117 Index 157 ILLUSTRATIONS 1 Self-Portrait at the Age of 24, 1804, courtesy of Musée Condé, 2 Chantilly 2 Chérubini and the Muse of Lyric Poetry, 1842 (detail), copyright 4 RMN, Musée du Louvre and the Agence Photographique de la Reunion des Musées Nationaux 3 The Apotheosis of Homer, 1827 (detail), copyright RMN, Musée du 12 Louvre and the Agence Photographique de la Reunion des Musées Nationaux 4 Ibid. (detail) 13 5 Eugène Delacroix, Ovid amongst the Scythians, 1854, courtesy of the 15 National Gallery, London 6 The Vow of Louis XIII, 1824 (detail), courtesy of the Musée Ingres, 15 Montauban, Photographie Roumagnac 7 Roman drawing, Via della Suburra (detail), courtesy of the Musée 20 Ingres, Montauban, Photographie Roumagnac 8 M.Bertin l’Aîné, 1831 (detail), courtesy of the Musée du Louvre, 20 Photographie Giraudon 9 Passage Choiseul, 1980s (detail), the author 22 10 Mme de Senonnes, 1816, copyright RMN, Musée de Nantes and the 23 Agence Photographique de la Reunion des Musées Nationaux 11 The Apotheosis of Napoleon I, 1853–1854, courtesy of the Musées de 29 la Ville de Paris, Musée Carnavalet, Photographie Giraudon 12 The Apotheosis of Homer, 1827, copyright RMN, Musée du Louvre 30 and the Agence Photographique de la Reunion des Musées Nationaux 13 Bather, 1864 (detail), courtesy of Harvard University Art Museums 31 14 Odalisque with a Slave, 1839 (detail), courtesy of Fogg Art Museum, 32 Harvard University Art Museums 15 Virgil Reading from the Aeneid, drawing, 1850→, courtesy of 33 Harvard University Art Museums 16 Mme Vesey and Her Daughter, drawing, 1816 (detail), courtesy of 34 Harvard University Art Museums 17 La Famille Stamaty, 1818, copyright RMN, Musée du Louvre and the 3 4 Agence Photographique de la Reunion des Musées Nationaux 18 Virgil Reading from the Aeneid, 1812, courtesy of Musée des 35 Augustins, Toulouse 19 Passage Vivienne, 1980s, the author 44 ix 20 Mme de Senonnes, 1816 (detail), copyright RMN, Musée de Nantes 44 and the Agence Photographique de la Reunion des Musées Nationaux 21 The Apotheosis of Homer, 1827 (detail), copyright RMN, Musée du 46 Louvre and the Agence Photographique de la Reunion des Musées Nationaux 22 Mme Moitessier, 1856, courtesy of the National Gallery, London 49 23 Hercules in Arcadia, Pompeian wall painting before 79 CE 50 24 Antiochus and Stratonice, 1840, Musée Condé, Chantilly, 52 Photographie Giraudon 25 Passage Vivienne, 1980s, the author 53 26 Via della Suburra, courtesy of the Musée Ingres, Montauban, 55 Photographie Roumagnac 27 View towards Santa Maria Maggiore, courtesy of the Musée Ingres, 56 Montauban, Photographie Roumagnac 28 François Premier Receives the Last Breath of Leonardo da Vinci, 61 1818, Petit Palais, Musée des Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris, copyright PMVP 29 Henri IV Playing with His Children, while the Spanish Ambassador is 62 Being Admitted, 1817, courtesy of Petit Palais, Musée des Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris, copyright PMVP 30 Paolo Malatesta and Francesca da Rimini, courtesy of Musée Condé, 64 Chantilly, Photographie Giraudon 31 Chérubini and the Muse of Lyric Poetry, 1842, copyright RMN, 68 Musée du Louvre and the Agence Photographique de la Reunion des Musées Nationaux 32 Joan of Arc, 1854, copyright RMN, Musée du Louvre and the Agence 75 Photographique de la Reunion des Musées Nationaux 33 Jupiter and Thetis, 1811, Musée Granet, Aix en Provence, 89 Photographie Giraudon. 34 The Family of Augustus Listening to Virgil Reading from the Aeneid, 90 1819, courtesy of Musée Royal, Brussels 35 La Famille Forestier, 1806, copyright RMN, Musée du Louvre and the 98 Agence Photographique de la Reunion des Musées Nationaux 36 Bonaparte as First Consul, 1804, courtesy of Musée des Beaux-Arts, 99 Liège 37 Julie Forestier, copy of Ingres self-portrait, 1806, copied by David 100 Pearce, London, 1999, courtesy of the copyist 38 Ibid. (detail) 100 39 Napoleon I on the Imperial Throne, 1806, copyright Photo-Musée de 102 l’Armée, Paris 40 Mme Rivière, Salon 1806, copyright RMN, Musée du Louvre and the 110 Agence Photographique de la Reunion des Musées Nationaux 41 Mlle Rivière, Salon 1806, copyright RMN, Musée du Louvre and the 122 Agence Photographique de la Reunion des Musées Nationaux