Ingres "Ce révolutionnaire-là"

Written in French

Ingres, admirer of ancient Greece and guardian of traditions; Ingres, influential member of the Institute and defender of tradition in the midst of the Romantic storm; Ingres, harshly criticized, sometimes hated, ultimately admired...

By brilliantly reconstructing seventy years of a turbulent era-from the Reign of Terror to the Second Empire-Stéphane Guégan deconstructs the traditional image of the painter. He shows how much we should be wary of his apparent classicism, his ostentatious veneration of Raphael, and his determination to triumph at the Salon. Ingres' painting-and not just his voluptuous nudes or biting portraits-constantly pushes the boundaries and rules it claims to follow.

With his keen sense of detail and smooth modeling, his anatomical distortions and bold colors, and his extremely eroticized bodies, he is the painter of excess rather than a clean slate. Through his stubborn work ethic-as early as 1806, he wanted to be "that revolutionary" for the arts-Ingres achieved a unique freedom of style that would fascinate many modern artists.