Gustave Caillebotte and the Fashioning of Identity in Impressionist Paris
Category: Books,Arts & Photography,History & Criticism
Gustave Caillebotte and the Fashioning of Identity in Impressionist Paris Details
Review "This collection's strength resides in its interpretations of Caillebotte's paintings in the contexts of personality, class, sexuality, and artistic style." -- Steven Z. Levine, the Leslie Clark Professor in the Humanities and director of the Center for Visual Culture, Bryn Mawr College Read more From the Back Cover Gustave Caillebotte (1848-1894), a long-neglected painter associated with the French Impressionists, recently emerged as a subject of intense public interest; his paintings, which have begun to exert an unexpected fascination for postmodern audiences, have become rich sites for scholarly interpretation and debate. The essays that comprise this volume employ a variety of perspectives to examine the ways in which Caillebotte's art sheds light on the formation of individual and class identities in Paris during the early years of the Third Republic-an era of transition marked by the triumph of capitalism and the instabilities of newly shifting gender roles in the modern world. Addressing a wide range of major paintings by Caillebotte, the contributors reveal the compound ways in which the artist encoded his images and the multiple interpretations to which these images are susceptible. Juxtaposed to complement and challenge one another, these essays build a provocative whole as they probe issues of spectatorship and authorial intention. The contributors-all internationally known scholars and art professionals-create an important theoretical framework for the discussion of Caillebotte's work. Read more See all Editorial Reviews
Reviews
I saw the terrific Caillebotte exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago some years ago and this book afterwards deepened my appreciation of the painter's genius and helped situate him in his period. It's not written for a general audience, but that didn't bother me. I wanted to understand his work and this was just right.