André Chénier parmi les statues

In line with Brix's thesis, Starobinski proposes that André Chénier's neoclassicism defines itself as nostalgia for the energy, rather than the forms, of sculptural transformation. The poet departs from the disembodied Platonism of Winckelmann's ideal to emphasize the vitalism of creative activity – an organic regeneration characterized in his work by images and structures of fluidity that would produce new gods for a new time. Ironically, Chénier, who understood his vocation as inaugural of a new age, died for questioning the policies of the new "gods," especially those of the neoclassical painter, Jacques-Louis David, whose art had become a vehicle for revolutionary propaganda. (In French)