Cézanne and The Eternal Feminine

This volume explores the alteration of Cézanne's The Eternal Feminine and its importance to the history of art.

Wayne Andersen (Author)

9780521837262, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 24 March 2005

266 pages, 109 b/w illus.
25.4 x 17.8 x 1.6 cm, 0.68 kg

"As a treasure trove of myths and images reflecting prurient male sexuality in high art, this study richly records a facet of nineteenth-century French cultural history." - Laurence M. Porter, Michigan State University

Cézanne's painting The Eternal Feminine, painted in 1878, has been given considerable attention in the literature on this artist, though it has generally embarrassed scholars because it suggests aspects of the artist's personality that many connoisseurs in the past would rather have repressed. The painting has been known by a variety of titles and, as Wayne Andersen has discovered, has also been altered. He traced these alterations to an art dealer who made them in an effort to render the painting more marketable. This volume is the first to interrogate the original state of The Eternal Feminine and to resolve its mysterious importance to Cézanne and, more broadly, the history of art. Devoting a separate chapter to each of the titles by which the picture has been known, Andersen resolves its hidden meaning while providing a fresh look at Cézanne's artistic process.

1. The eternal feminine
2. The miracle of her restored vision
3. Les Spectacles des Fêtes Foraines
4. Ambroise Vollard's show window
5. Leda and the Swan
6. The clothed and the naked
7. The Death of Sardanapalus
8. The whore of Babylon
9. Venus, venal, venality
10. The sacrifice of the eose
11. Hero and Leander
12. The apotheosis of Delacroix
13. The vicissitudes of love
14. Wives in crisis
15. Why not put the eyes at the crotch
16. From whose point of view
17. The sand-man.

Subject Areas: History of art & design styles: from c 1900 - [ACX]