Comparison 5: David Covers His Tracks
[Click image to see a larger version.]
Jacques-Louis David
La Mort da Socrat ('The Death of Socrates'), 1787
Oil on canvas, w196.2 cm x h129.5 cm (77.2" x 51")
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY USA
Seem to be on a French kick, so we'll roll with that: Jacques-Louis David ('dah-VEED', not 'DAY-vid', though you can say it whichever way is more fun). Working in France around the time of the French Revolution (about a century before Van Gogh), he was probably the best-known Neoclassicist, which means he was part of a style that prided itself on renewing the rational, deliberate beauty ideals of ancient Greece.
We can see immediately in the above painting (which, again, I encourage you to click on so you can see it more closely) that David has left almost no visible brushstrokes. It is a highly polished painting in agreement with the highest academic standards of the day, and in some ways couldn't be more different than Van Gogh's rough, lopsided Peasant. But we have to focus again on what David was going for here: a rational approach (Neoclassicism) to a favorite topic of the rational mind (the death of the great philosopher Socrates).
And what does the lack of marks actually do? It brings our attention to the figures, to their arrangement, to the story. It makes us somewhat forget the artist as someone who physically made this thing, and demands that we think of the painting in terms of its ideas instead.
100%, the goal for David seems always to have been elevation of idea, not process — with a corresponding focus on the mind that makes the work, not the body that executes. Because of this, it's specifically because David's mark-making style is so subtle here that it is able to speak volumes in this painting. And this will be something that will hold generally true for all artworks: the marks, visible or hidden, rough or polished, forceful or gentle, are there to reinforce the work's meaning, and the work can often be judged 'good' or 'bad' in this category based on how well the meaning and the marks support each other: basically, do the marks add something to how the painting functions?