Painting as a Way of Life

Painting as a Way of Life is at once a major transformative study of Poussin and other seventeenth-century French artists, and a vital book for art and intellectual historians. Neer rejects the retrojection of divisions between theory and practice, philosophy and artisanship onto seventeenth-century French painters, showing instead how to look at the interrelationship of painting as both practice and philosophy. -- Matthew L. Jones, Princeton University Neer proposes a startling new way of looking at and understanding Poussin and seventeenth-century French painting more broadly, centering on an understanding of painting as practical wisdom rather than theory. Interrogating a key period associated with the rise of absolutism and the emergence of the academies in France, Neer challenges conventional notions of regularization and theorization that have been used to define classical French art. Rich and intellectually compelling, Painting as a Way of Life is marked by quality of its scholarship and its innovative methodology that bridges the domains of seventeenth-century French art, history, philosophy, and literature. -- Dalia Judovitz, Emory University Scholars have long seen Nicolas Poussin as the Cartesian champion of an abstract, rule-based, system-building approach to art. Neers brilliant new book liberates the seventeenth-century master from the classical art theory constructed by the generation that came after him. This transformative and audacious study rediscovers the artist for whom painting is a philosophical practice capable of changing us. Neer reckons with the peculiarities and strangeness of Poussins art and makes us see familiar paintings anew, even as he provides us with tools for reassessing the works of his contemporaries from different traditions. -- Hall Bjrnstad, Indiana University Bloomington

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.

Acknowledgments Introduction. Before Theory: Painting and Philosophical Practice Part I: Poussins Classicism Chapter One. Poussins Self-Portraits and the Dream of Classical Theory Chapter Two. Poussins Philosophy Chapter Three. Poussins Practice Chapter Four. Landscape and Disproportion Part II: Realism, Acuity, and Metaphor Chapter Five. Discerning Eyes: Louise Moillon, Still-Life, and Genre Chapter Six. Corporeality and Metaphor in La Tour and Le Nain Coda Notes Bibliography Index