Fin de partie: A Group of Self-Portraits by Jean-Léon Gérôme (original) (raw)
Related papers
Jean-Léon Gérôme and Polychrome Sculpture: Reconstructing the Artist's Hierarchy of the Arts
Dix-Neuf 18, issue 1, 2014 by the Société des dix-neuvièmistes and Taylor and Francis (UK), eds. Nick White and Nigel Watkins, Ingentaconnect, online, 2014
This article offers an investigation of the motives behind Jean-Léon Gérôme’s foray into sculpture towards the end of his career. By way of an exploration of Gérôme’s treatment of the Pygmalion myth, so closely tied to artistic rivalry in the nineteenth century, the artist’s engagement with the paragone, or inter-arts rivalry, of the era is analysed. Consideration of polychrome’s status amongst theorists and critics of the time serves to contextualize the artist’s interest in the tradition. These avenues of inquiry lead to a conclusion regarding the artist’s own hierarchy of the arts.
re-published in a modified version as The Psychoanalytic Approach to Artistic and Literary Expression in Toward the Postmodern, ed. R. Harvey and M. Roberts (Amherst, NY, Humanity Books, 1993, pp. 2-11). Opposing itself to various other psychoanalytic approaches to art and literature (approaches that Lyotard criticises along the way), the paper argues that because artistic and literary works are laden with figure, which operates according to a different logic than that of language, artistic expression must be understood as having properties different from those of spoken or written commentary. Expression is thus set off from meaning, and is shown to reveal a very specific kind of truth: the trace of the primary process, free for the moment from the ordering functions of the secondary process. Its formative operations not only leave their mark on the space in which artistic works appear, but produce new, plastic, figures. Lyotard argues that the artistic impulse is the desire to see these unconscious operations, "the desire to see the desire." Attention to this function of truth and to the role of artistic space in giving the artwork its "play" brings attention back to Freud's analysis of expression in tragedy and its link to the results of his own self-analysis -and thus to the very constitution of psychoanalysis itself.
Ideal and Disintegration: Dynamics of the Self and Art at the Fin-de-Siècle
Ideal and Disintegration: Dynamics of the Self and Art at the Fin-de-Siècle, 2014
"This study examines the dynamics of the self and art in the context of the Symbolist art and aesthetics of the fin-de-siècle. The purpose is to open new perspectives into how the self and its relationship with the world were understood and experienced, and to explore how these conceptions of selfhood suggest parallels with questions of art and creativity in ways that continue to affect our perceptions of these issues even today. The decades around the turn of the twentieth century were a period of intensifying preoccupation with questions of subjectivity as the coherence and autonomy of the self were constantly being threatened in the rapidly modernizing world. This issue is examined through an analysis and discussions of artworks by the Finnish artists Pekka Halonen and Ellen Thesleff, the Norwegian artist Edvard Munch, the Swedish author and artist August Strindberg, and the Danish artist Jens Ferdinand Willumsen. The artworks are considered as active participants in the discourses of the period and as sites of intellectual and artistic reflection. Self-portraits are the most obvious products of artistic self-examination, but the highly subjective attitude towards art indicates that in a way every work of art can be perceived as a self-portrait. Symbolism, therefore, constitutes a point in art history where old definitions of self-portraiture were no longer sufficient. Art came to be understood as a form of knowledge and a source of truth. Hence, the creative process turned into a method of self-exploration motivated by an attempt to transcend beyond everyday consciousness in order to achieve a heightened perception of the self and the world. At the same time, the focus of the artwork shifted towards an immaterial space of imagination. Hence, the work of art was no longer understood as a finite material object but rather as a revelation of an idea. The constant need for self-exploration was also related to an ever increasing questioning of traditional religiosity and a subsequent interest in religious syncretism, as well as in various mystical, spiritual, and occultist ideologies, which affected both the form and content of art. Subjectivity is often perceived as one of the defining features of Symbolist art. However, due to the content-oriented approach, which until recent years has dominated art historical research on Symbolism, the meaning of this subjective tendency has not been properly analysed. Although the emphasis on subjectivity obviously had a great impact on the content of the new art, which became increasingly concerned with mythological and fantastic material, it also worked on a more abstract level affecting the ways that the meaning and status of art were understood. The approach taken in this study is based on an idea of the interconnectedness of form and content. Through this critical perspective, this study takes part in an international current of research which seeks to redefine Symbolism and its relation to modernism."
Caught between Gautier and Baudelaire: Walter Pater and the Death of Sculpture
In 1866 Swinburne announced the death of sculpture as a well-established fact. In his pamphlet Notes on Poems and Reviews he replied to some of the negative criticism his Poems and Ballads had received. 1 His poem on the Hellenistic sculpture of the Sleeping Hermaphrodite in the Louvre had been especially criticized for an excessive sensuousness, and he now held up his own poem as the source of a resurrection of interest in sculpture. While stressing the disturbing pagan physicality of sculpture, he attacked the hypocritical moralizing voices of contemporary criticism and their lack of interest in plastic art: Sculpture I knew was a dead art; buried centuries deep out of sight, with no angel keeping watch over the sepulchre; its very grave-clothes divided by wrangling and impotent sectaries, and no chance anywhere visible of a resurrection. I knew that belief in the body was the secret of sculpture, and that a past age of ascetics could no more attempt or attain it than the present age of hypocrites; I knew that modern moralities and recent religions were, if possible, more averse and alien to this purely physical and pagan art than to the others; but how far averse I did not know. There is nothing lovelier, as there is nothing more famous, in latter Hellenic art, than the statue of Hermaphroditus. No one would compare it with the greatest works of Greek sculpture. No one would lift Keats on a level with Shakespeare. But the Fates have allowed us to possess at once Othello and Hyperion, Theseus and Hermaphroditus. At Paris, at Florence, at Naples, the delicate divinity of this work has always drawn towards it the eyes of artists and poets. 2
Baudelaire’s Critique of Sculpture
Journal of Aesthetic Education, 2015
Am şlefuit materia pentru a afla linia continuă. -Constantin Brâncuşi 1 Und das Problem ensteht: was is das, was übrigbleibt, wenn ich von der Tatsache, daß ich meinen Arm hebe, die abziehe, daß mein Arm sich hebt? -Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations 2 __S __N __L KSD Baudelaire's Critique of Sculpture S__ N__ L__ KSD 98 Cusmariu __S __N __L KSD __S __N __L KSD Baudelaire's Critique of Sculpture
A portrait of the artist as a young man : authoritative text, backgrounds and contexts, criticism
2007
This Norton Critical Edition is based on Hans Gabler's acclaimed text and is accompanied by his introduction and textual notes. John Paul Riquelme provides detailed explanatory annotations. "Backgrounds and Contexts" is thematically organized to provide readers with a clear picture of the novel's historical, cultural, and literary inspirations. Topics include "Political Nationalism: Irish History, 1798-1916," "The Irish Literary and Cultural Revival," "Religion," and "Aesthetic Backgrounds." "Criticism" begins with John Paul Riquelme's helpful essay on the novel's structural form and follows with twelve diverse interpretations by, among others, Kenneth Burke, Umberto Eco, Hugh Kenner, Maud Ellmann, Joseph Valente, and Marian Eide. A Selected Bibliography is also included.