Édouard Vuillard, the Nabis, and the Politics of Domesticity

This ground-breaking book is the first to address the feminine and feminist politics of Intimiste art - a modernist mode of art making developed in the 1890s by edouard Vuillard while associated with the Nabi ''brotherhood''. Coined by contemporary critics, '' intimisme '' encapsulated the shared approach of these artists to depicting intimate settings and themes. Vuillard''s paintings, which are typically small, employ bold pigments and economic brushstrokes to depict female figures in tightly composed apartment interiors. Those portrayed include his mother and sister, just as wives and lovers dominate the art of other Nabis, including Maurice Denis and Pierre Bonnard.Francesca Berry comparatively analyses the gender politics of Nabi art to reveal real differences. Through skilled visual interpretation she argues that Vuillard attempted a profound engagement with the material conditions of feminine domesticity in cooperation with his first and most sustained audience: women. He did so, the author reveals, in artworks that explore a complex range of feminine experiences such as sexual initiation, stillbirth, illicit work, and unceasing housework. The personal gender politics of Intimiste practice also are foregrounded. Vuillard''s studio-bedroom afforded him access to quotidian femininity. But at what risks to his sister''s privacy and to his mother''s subjectivity?Making an artistic project of feminine domesticity also meant entering the field of politics. The 1890s was the decade of state legislation and feminist demands with respect to work in the home and women''s familial rights. Personal in motif and Symbolist in form, Berry''s extensive historical research reveals these artworks also to have been social and political, sometimes even feminist, in meaning. Transcending the structural repression of domesticity in histories of modernist art, this book powerfully overturns residual myths of aesthetic introspection and social retreat that for too long have been attached to Nabi Symbolism.>...

Auteur
Francesca Berry is Associate Professor of History of Art at University of Birmingham, UK. She is an expert in the art, visual culture and design of domesticity and the interior in France 18501940 and has published extensively in this field.

Texte du rabat

"Highly influential, and - as this book shows - also politically engaged, the art of the Nabis (1888-1900) lay the groundwork for the transition from impressionism to modernism in French art. This ground-breaking book is the first to address the feminine and feminist politics of domesticity in the Intimiste art of âEdouard Vuillard and the Nabis. Personal in motif and decorative in form, Francesca Berry's extensive historical research and skilled visual analysis reveal the social and political, sometimes even feminist, meanings of these artworks. Transcending the structural repression of domesticity in histories of modernist art, this book powerfully overturns residual myths of aesthetic introspection and social retreat that for too long have been attached to Nabi Synthetism"--

Contenu
List of Illustrations Acknowledgements List of Abbreviations Note on Translations Introduction 1. Intimisme and the Critical Politics of Domesticity 2. Atelier-Chambre and Chambre: The Sexual Politics of Intimiste Space 3. Maman: Muse and Motif 4. Seeing and Sewing: The Family Business 5. Brush and Broom: Housework as Art Work 6. Conclusion Notes Bibliography Index