Antiquity, Theatre, and the Painting of Henry Fuseli (Classical Presences)

Description

Review Pop's intervention is deeply informed and highly original, rewriting the received history of neoclassicism. Fuseli emerges as a complex artistic, moral, and political character who engaged the question of the 'ends' of tolerance and sympathy in a liberal society while at the same time acknowledging the unpleasant, messy, vulgar, and indeed terrifying and traumatic configuration of its 'neopagan' classical past. Pop masterfully weaves the complicated story of a fraught dialogue between neoclassic and neopagan claims and fantasies. The book is not only an essential resource for a subtle interpretation of the materials of its period but also a masterclass in art-writing. (Whitney Davis, Pardee Professor of History and Theory of Ancient and Modern Art, University of California, Berkeley)In a tour de force of scrupulous research and glittering insight, Pop persuades us that Fuseli's art did not fail to exemplify virtue, it ventured a new kind of history painting. Inspired by newly discovered remnants of pagan culture, by growing knowledge of cultures around the globe and by contemporary ideas of liberal humanism, Fuseli reformulated the relations of the classical and the modern in works of art which raise the spectre of the relativity of morals. More than a new account of Fuseli, this book is a readerly adventure in the history of art, and in the political and philosophical ideas underpinning current debates in social thought and visual culture. (Karen Lang, Associate Professor, History of Art, Univeristy of Warwick) About the Author Andrei Pop is Associate Professor in the John U. Nef Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago.