Bodies of Modernity: Figure and Flesh in Fin-de-Siecle France (Interplay, Theory, Arts, History) [Paperback]

Tamar Garb (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 17, 1998 | Series: Interplay, Theory, Arts, History

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.

Editorial Reviews

From Kirkus Reviews

paper 0-500-28049-5 Insofar as art historical inquiry in the second half of the 20th century increasingly has come to rely on psychological methodologies of one form or another, it has perhaps been more receptive than other academic fields to the advent of cultural studies; this adaptability is on ample display in Bodies of Modernity. In this bracing series of related essays, Garb (The Jew in the Text, not reviewed, etc.) examines t.he representation of gender in the works of late-19th-century French artists: Gustave Caillebotte, James Tissot, Georges Seurat, Auguste Renoir, and Paul Czanneand photographers, including a fascinating study of the larger cultural response to the bodybuilding movement pioneered by Edmond Desbonnet. Garb is particularly good in dissecting the societal imperatives that struck down such works as Caillebotte's seemingly innocuous Interior, Woman Reading (1880) and illuminating the subdued radicalism implicit in his paintings of urban artisans at work, as is her analysis of the trope of the female bather from Boucher and Fragonard through Renoir. There is, nonetheless, an occasional bit of mindlessness, as when Garb notes at one moment that Renoir, in his Nude in the Sunlight, is merely rendering a familiarread clichdartistic trope, but states thereafter that the work indicates that the artist obviously yearned for the ``fecund, free femininity'' the painting purportedly represents: No one can have it both ways, a scholar least of all. Such lapses are few, however, and well outnumbered by the sort of acute pronouncementNature was always the product of culture,'' from the same chapter, is onethat jars as much for the manner in which it distills a truth as for the economy with which it is presented. While neither her subject nor her approach is strikingly new, Garb's gaze is formidable, attenuated to precisely those nuances upon which a proper understanding of these works would seem to depend. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

About the Author

Tamar Garb is Reader in the History of Art at University College London and author of Sisters of the Brush and Bodies of Modernity, among many publications on late nineteenth-century art and culture.

Product Details

• Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: Thames & Hudson (July 17, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0500280495
• ISBN-13: 978-0500280492
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.2 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,254,355 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Rebuke to Denver's "feminazi" comment, January 10, 2004

By 

Beth Hancock "elizhncck" (Atlanta, GA, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Bodies of Modernity: Figure and Flesh in Fin-de-Siecle France (Interplay, Theory, Arts, History) (Paperback)

Since the Denver, CO student is the only review on offer, I felt compelled to give more insight on this enlightening book and talented author. Even though "feminazi" is a highly offensive term, refuting it would catapult me into that very category(or so believed by the people who would actually use such a term). Regardless, I don't want to run the risk of undermining my message by spouting fervent feminist views. This book is not really about that. This book calls into question the socialization that has been reinforced for many centuries in western culture. Tamar Garb chooses a particular time--late 18th Century--and a particular culture--Paris--to deconstruct that socialization from a modern perspective and offer new insight on how social influence, and the strict gender constructions involved, are inescapable for the artist, himself being a product of that culture and social order. The female nude has long been the subject of high art, making the woman the object of the gaze. Art was created for patrons who could afford it, which were never women during this time for they scarcely worked and were certainly never the bread-winners of their households, and the art reflected that showing a woman in the role that those patrons, men, would want to see her: as the object of their sexual desire, as a societal symbol of status (by the way she dressed), as the goddess of their domestic realm. We of course take this for granted today in a society with much greater equality between the sexes, but in late 18th century France, social gender differentiation was extensive...and those social constructions influenced artists in the production of their work, just as they influenced every human being belonging to the culture, whether they were conscious of it or not. The most contemporary and current art-historical atmosphere is one in which modern art historians, scholars and critics are primarily concerned with looking at the art production of the past in a new light and offering some new perspective on it. There is more concern now with art as a product of a certain culture at a certain time, and it can be read as such--as a historical by-product, as it were. The feminist movement is a part of the current effort to call our socialization into question, but it's not the only movement involved, and to dismiss this book as entertainment for "feminazi's" as the above reader did is obtuse and quite ridiculous. This is a thorough examination of the gendered socialization of men as well as women in a particular cutlure and time that happened to produce some of our greatest artistic masterpieces. You'll find no women's liberation mantras in Garb's text, only a slow and thorough breakdown of the social aspects of the artistic environment in late 18th century Paris, how that influenced the artist, and how we can view in new light the artwork passed down to us from another time and place of which we have no first-hand knowledge....pure and simple! It's a great read.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Plain English, September 1, 2005

By 

A. N. Saiyid (London, UK.) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Bodies of Modernity: Figure and Flesh in Fin-de-Siecle France (Interplay, Theory, Arts, History) (Paperback)

I have been taught by the author of this book in London. I find her written words clear and highly accessible. As a text for classes, it has provided me with much needed insight into a new field about which I am now very enthusiastic. I acknowledge limitations in every methodology or 'ism' including feminism. I found this book, however, a clearly written and readable account suitable for a lay-reader and students alike.

1 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars feminists will enjoy, October 28, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Bodies of Modernity: Figure and Flesh in Fin-de-Siecle France (Interplay, Theory, Arts, History) (Paperback)

Yes, feminists will enjoy. But that is about all who will. I had to read this for a class. It does give some good information about artists, but most of the book is over-annalyzing and very over critical. It want's the artists to be very dirty old men who only think about sex when doing art. I think that it is a false commentary who many feminazis would enjoy.