Fellow Men

Erscheinungsjahr 2013
ISBN: 978-0-691-15367-4
Verlag: Princeton University Press

Buch, Englisch, 368 Seiten, Format (B × H): 189 mm x 264 mm, Gewicht: 1240 g

Focusing on the art of Henri Fantin-Latour (1836-1904) and his colleagues Gustave Courbet, Edgar Degas, Edouard Manet, Frédéric Bazille, and Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Fellow Men argues for the importance of the group as a defining subject of nineteenth-century French painting. Through close readings of some of the most ambitious paintings of the realist and impressionist generation, Bridget Alsdorf offers new insights into how French painters understood the shifting boundaries of their social world, and reveals the fragile masculine bonds that made up the avant-garde. A dedicated realist who veered between extremes of sociability and hermetic isolation, Fantin-Latour painted group dynamics over the course of two decades, from 1864 to 1885. This was a period of dramatic change in French history and art--events like the Paris Commune and the rise and fall of impressionism raised serious doubts about the power of collectivism in art and life. Fantin-Latour's monumental group portraits, and related works by his friends and colleagues from the 1850s through the 1880s, represent varied visions of collective identity and test the limits of association as both a social and an artistic pursuit. By examining the bonds and frictions that animated their social circles, Fantin-Latour and his cohorts developed a new pictorial language for the modern group: one of fragmentation, exclusion, and willful withdrawal into interior space that nonetheless presented individuality as radically relational.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Alsdorf, Bridget

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Kunst Künstlerische Stoffe, Motive, Themen Künstlerische Stoffe, Motive, Themen: Menschen, Häusliches Umfeld
• Geisteswissenschaften Kunst Kunstgeschichte Kunstgeschichte: 19. Jahrhundert
• Geisteswissenschaften Kunst Kunst, allgemein Einzelne Künstler: Biographien, Monografien
• Geisteswissenschaften Kunst Kunstformen, Kunsthandwerk Malerei: Gemälde

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Acknowledgments ix

Introduction 1

Chapter 1 The Self in Group Portraiture 19

In Homage 21
Moi et Delacroix 39
Manet: "One in a thousand, or alone" 56
Degas: Relational Portraiture 61

Chapter 2 A Crisis of Pride 68

Mutual Admiration Society 70
Courbet's Studio 74
To Truth! 79
Mirror, Mirror 82

Chapter 3 Studio of the Self 105

Solitary Confinement 111
Velázquez's Mirror 131
Bazille's Studio 144
Secret Societies 149

Chapter 4 Deviance and Disappearance 156

Les Vilains Bonshommes 160
Courbet / Fantin / Pelletan 178
In Absentia 189
Manet's Crowd 193
Rimbaud the Bourgeois 198

Chapter 5 The Irregularists 203

Renoir's Society 206
An Impressionist's Studio 215
Degas, Odd Man In 217

Conclusion 228

Notes 243

Selected Bibliography 309

Index 323

Über Autor(innen)

Alsdorf, Bridget
Bridget Alsdorf is an assistant professor in the Department of Art and Archaeology at Princeton University.

Bridget Alsdorf is an assistant professor in the Department of Art and Archaeology at Princeton University.