Painting as a Way of Life

Richard Neer is the Barbara E. and Richard J. Franke Distinguished Service Professor in Art History, Cinema & Media Studies and the College at the University of Chicago, where he also serves as director of the Franke Institute for the Humanities. He is the author of numerous books and articles on classical art, cinema, art theory and French painting, including The Emergence of the Classical Style in Greek Sculpture. In 2022 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

"Where do we go from here, when it feels as if truth itself is receding out of reach? Thanks to Neer, I now see our collective condition in Nicolas Poussin’s 1658 depiction of the blinded giant Orion seeking the healing rays of the sun to restore his sight. Yet the painting contains two conflicting sources of light, implying a tragic irony: He cannot know whether he’s getting closer to his cure or farther from it.Neer’s book speaks to our troubled time by casting seventeenth-century painting as a spiritual exercise, an ancient conception (revived by intellectual historian Michel Foucault) of philosophical activity not as a mode of thinking but as an art of living. Likewise, philosophical painting does not illustrate truthful ideas but rather inculcates habits of truth-seeking. Most remarkably, Painting as a Way of Life embodies the virtues it describes. Interpretations that aspire toward correctness end the quest for truth: When we find the answer, we can stop looking. Neer instead values recognition and discernment."

• AcknowledgmentsIntroduction. Before Theory: Painting and Philosophical PracticePart I: Poussin’s ClassicismChapter One. Poussin’s Self-Portraits and the Dream of Classical TheoryChapter Two. Poussin’s PhilosophyChapter Three. Poussin’s PracticeChapter Four. Landscape and DisproportionPart II: Realism, Acuity, and MetaphorChapter Five. Discerning Eyes: Louise Moillon, Still-Life, and GenreChapter Six. Corporeality and Metaphor in La Tour and Le NainCodaNotesBibliographyIndex