Alex Potts, University of Reading
"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 19th and 20th 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."


Book Description
Ingres Then, and Now is an innovative study of one of the best-known French artists of the nineteenth century, Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres. Adam Rifkin reevaluates Ingres' work in the context of a variety of literary, musical and visual cultures which are normally seen as alien to him. Rifkin offers insightful interpretations of Ingres' early work, and follows the artist's image in the popular cultures of the twentieth century. Approaching Ingres' paintings as symptomatic of the commodity cultures of nineteenth-century Paris, he draws the artist away from his familiar association with the Academy and the Salon, and instead situates Ingres in the world of the Parisian Arcades. Finally, the book examines Ingres' importance for the great French art critic Jean Cassou, and makes a bold, contemporary gay appropriation of his work. Ingres Then, and Now transforms the popular image we have of Ingres. Rifkin argues that the figure of the artist is neither fixed in time or place--there is neither an essential man named Ingres, nor a singular body of his work--but rather is an effect of many complex and overlapping historical forces. Lavishly illustrated with over 50 images, this compelling study will transform our understanding of Ingres and his cultural impact.


About the Author
Adrian Rifkin is Professor of Visual Culture and Media at Middlesex University. He is the author of Street Noises: Parisian Pleasure 1900-1940 (1993).

FROM THE PUBLISHER

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. This book 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.

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