Adapted from the lecture she delivered at the Institut für Kunstkritik, Städelschule, Ewa Lajer-Burcharth’s essay explores the dimension of self-reflexivity in the work of eighteenth-century French painter Jean-Siméon Chardin.

In response to recent developments in pictorial practice and critical discourse, Painting beyond Itself seeks new ways to approach and historicize the question of the medium. Reaching back to the earliest theoretical and institutional definitions of painting, this book focuses on the changing role of materiality in establishing painting as the privileged practice, discourse, and institution of modernity.

Adapted from the lecture she delivered at the Institut für Kunstkritik, Städelschule, Ewa Lajer-Burcharth’s essay explores the dimension of self-reflexivity in the work of eighteenth-century French painter Jean-Siméon Chardin.