With essays by Valerie Bajou, Philippe Bordes, Thomas Crow, Michael Fried, Tom Gretton, Darcy Grimaldo Grigsby, Stephane Guegan, Daniel Harkett, Godehard Janzing, Dorothy Johnson, Mehdi Korchane, Ewa Lajer-Burcharth, Issa Lampe, Mark Ledbury, Simon Lee, Heather McPherson, David O'Brien, Satish Padiyar, Todd Porterfield, Susan L. Siegfried, and Helen Weston Jacques-Louis David (1748-1825), the most celebrated painter of his era, was appointed court painter to Napoleon in 1804 and exiled to Brussels in 1816. This important book--based on the proceedings of an international symposium--explores David's grand projects of the Empire period and the often mysterious works produced in his last years as a political exile. David after David features twenty-one essays by leading art historians that discuss these later works--which include innovative portraits as well as paintings and drawings that address the opposing themes of the antique and modern--in the aesthetic, political, and social contexts of their production and reception. The book also draws upon recently discovered letters the artist wrote in exile and provides fascinating new perspectives into his life and art. Distributed for the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts

Between 1760 and 1800, British aristocrats became preoccupied with the acquisition of ancient Greek and Roman artifacts. From marble busts to intricately painted vases, these antiquities were amassed in vast collections held in country houses and libraries throughout Britain. In "Fabricating the Antique," Viccy Coltman examines these objects and their owners, as well as dealers, restorers, designers, and manufacturers. She provides a close look at the classical revival that resulted in this obsession with collecting antiques.
Looking at the theoretical foundations of neoclassicism, Coltman contends this reinvention of ancient material culture was more than a fabrication of style. Based in the strong emphasis on classical education during this time, neoclassicism, Coltman claims, could be more accurately described as a style of thought translated into material possessions. "Fabricating the Antique" is a new take on both well-known collections of ancient art and newly cataloged artifacts. This book also covers how these objects--once removed from their original context--were received, preserved, and displayed. Art historians, classicists, and archaeologists alike will benefit from this important examination of British eighteenth-century history.

The desire for things which are inspired by, imitate, or indeed are Greek, or Greco-Roman has been felt throughout history. The twenty contributions in this volume explore the presence and diffusion of what they term 'The Classical Taste' from the 5th century BC to the 20th century focusing on the methods and media through which this occurs. Including discussions on vase painting, ancient gems, the image of Alexander the Great, Roman medallions, cameos, statuettes and portraits, and the reception of Classicism in the medieval, Renaissance and modern periods.

In the late 1790s, British Prime Minister William Pitt created a crisis of representation when he pressured the British Parliament to relieve the Bank of England from its obligations to convert paper notes into coin. Paper quickly became associated with a form of limitless reproduction that threatened to dematerialize solid bodies and replace them with insubstantial shadows. Media Critique in the Age of Gillray centres on printed images and graphic satires which view paper as the foundation for the contemporary world. Through a focus on printed, visual imagery from practitioners such as James Gillray, William Blake, John Thomas Smith, and Henry Fuseli, the book addresses challenges posed by reproductive technologies to traditional concepts of subjective agency. Joseph Monteyne shows that the late eighteenth-century paper age's baseless fabric set the stage for contemporary digital media's weightless production. Engagingly written and abundantly illustrated, Media Critique in the Age of Gillray highlights the fact that graphic culture has been overlooked as an important sphere for the production of critical and self-reflective discourses around media transformations and the visual turn in British culture.