Jacques Louis David Quotes

In the arts the way in which an idea is rendered, and the manner in which it is expressed, is much more important than the idea itself.

It is the last painting that I want to do, but I want to surpass myself in it. I am putting into it the experience of my 65 years and I do not want to touch a paintbrush again.

Jacques-Louis David: Art, Virtue, and Revolution.” The Death of Marat was one of my favorite paintings. A man stabbed to death in the bathtub.

In the arts the way in which an idea is rendered, and the manner in which it is expressed, is much more important than the idea itself. —JACQUES-LOUIS DAVID

In Paris, we spent hours at the Louvre examining great works by Géricault, Trioson, Da Vinci—the Mona Lisa was surprisingly small but had yet to be cordoned off and encased—and Ingres. I remember marveling at Ingres’s Valpinçon Bather. April and I couldn’t believe you could make a painting that embodied such silence. I also remember looking at Jacques-Louis David’s paintings The Coronation of Napoleon and The Death of Marat and trying to rationalize how an artist could at one moment celebrate so brilliantly the hero of the French Revolution, only to turn around and glorify the embodiment of imperialist ambition. Let’s face it, artists are whores. They go where the money is, where they’re loved and appreciated.

Jacques-Louis David’s The Death of Socrates.