Article: Sussman's Sabines: in her sumptuous, feature-length Rape of the Sabine Women, recently screened in New York, Eve Sussman updates Roman myth and its Neo-Classical representations with references that range from David Hockney to Jacques Tati.

Centuries before there were discussions of Cartier-Bresson's "decisive moment," Western painters were all over the problem of how to deliver the fullness of narrative in one ripe image. During the Renaissance, the debate was dogged by professional insecurity: only through the ideal portrayal of exemplary actions, so it was argued, could painting rise above its craft basis to claim the lofty humanistic status enjoyed by poetry. In time, the discourse grew more authoritarian, as the fine arts academies of the 17th and 18th centuries placed history painting at the summit of a hierarchy of specializations, with portraiture, genre and still life marking a descent into humility ...

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