Bodies of modernity : figure and flesh in fin-de-siècle France
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
Bodies of modernity : figure and flesh in fin-de-siècle France
（Interplay : arts, history, theory）
Thames and Hudson, c1998
- : pbk
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Note
Bibliographical references: p. 221-231
Includes index
Description and Table of Contents
- Volume
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ISBN 9780500018422
Description
Bodies of Modernity explores the ways in which men's and women's bodies are represented in late nineteenth-century France. Thought to be unequivocally different from one another, modern men and women were expected to express their sexuality and social positions in the clothes they wore, the poses they struck, and the behavior they exhibited.In a series of case studies, Bodies of Modernity looks at works by Cezanne, Renoir, Seurat, Tissot, and Caillebotte as well as photographs of male body builders to establish an image of the modern body. Well-known works such as Renoir's Nude in the Sunlight, Seurat's Young Woman Powdering Herself, and Cezanne's Large Bathers are given new interpretations, while lesser known paintings like Tissot's series on The Women of Paris or Caillebotte's iconoclastic Man at the Bath are looked at seriously for the first time.Bodies of Modernity is an original account of one of the best-loved periods in Western art history. By taking "figure and flesh" as its focus, it bypasses traditional art historical categories and style labels to provide a reading of the work of the Impressionists and their contemporaries that gets to the heart of French society of the period.
- Volume
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: pbk ISBN 9780500280492
Description
In late 19th-century France, women and men were seen as polar opposites: women were creatures of nature and emotion, while men were the embodiment of reason, culture and science. Employing historical, social and contextual material, this book documents how these notions influenced the representation of men and women in the work of the most important Impressionist artists of the period: Gustave Caillebotte, James Tissot, Georges Seurat, Pierre Auguste Renoir and Paul Cezanne. By taking figure painting as her focus, Tamar Garb bypasses traditional art historical accounts in this study of one of the best-loved periods in Western art history. Beginning with a discussion of Caillebotte's male figures, the book then turns to photographs produced to promote the male body-building movement. Tissot's "Women of Paris" series is a catalogue of contemporary images of modern femininity - decorative, seductive, yet tinged with menace.
A detailed examination of Seurat's "Young Woman Powdering Herself" discusses this work in relation to contemporary views of the "woman at the toilette", while Renoir's rejection of modernity in favour of a nostalgic fantasy of earthy femininity is exposed as an important strain in modernist painting. Finally, the androgynous figures in Cezanne's late bather paintings are shown to be the least secure in their sexual identity. Yet even these works reveal the period's anxious and rigid definition of sexual difference.
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