Woman s Art Journal · 2001 · 19 citations · 0 references
HumanitiesArt HistoryGender StudiesAestheticsCreativityVisual CultureFeminist AestheticsFeminist ArtNineteenth-century French LiteraturePoeticsSymbolism In ArtVisual ArtsAwarenessFeminine RepresentationFeminist Art CriticismGender In PaintingNineteenth-century French ArtWomen's Artistic Expression
The late‑19th‑century French Symbolist movement emerged amid societal crisis, embracing a mystical, anti‑bourgeois interior world and idealizing the mad genius, while women exhibiting similar traits were dismissed as hysterical. The study examines how gender shaped the perception of genius within French Symbolism. The author analyzes fin‑de‑siècle artistic, social, and scientific discourses and interprets works by Symbolists such as Gauguin, van Gogh, and Moreau alongside female contemporaries like Claudel and Valadon to reveal a feminized aesthetic that excluded women.
A study of the relationship between gender and genius in late-19th-century French Symbolism. Born in an era of crisis, the Symbolist art movement was characterized by withdrawal to a mystical, anti-bourgeois world of the mind and spirit. While Symbolists idealized the poete maudit, a creative, mad genius exhibiting an emotional state of heightened awareness and passionate discontent, female artists displaying similar symptoms were dismissed as hysterical. Art historian Patricia Mathews traverses the artistic, social and scientific discourses of fin-de-siecle France in order to illuminate the Symbolist construction of a feminized aesthetic that nonetheless excluded female artists from its realm. Along the way, Mathews proffers readings of the art of such Symbolists as Gauguin, van Gogh and Moreau, as well as that of their female contemporaries Camille Claudel and Suzanne Valadon.