Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Prostitution was widespread in nineteenth-century Paris, and as French streets filled with prostitutes, French art and literature of the period paralleled this development. In this engrossing book, Hollis Clayson explains why. She provides the first description and analysis of French artistic interest in women prostitutes, examining how the subject was treated in the art of the 1870s and 1880s by such avant-garde painters as Cezanne, Degas, Manet, and Renoir, as well as by academic and low-brow painters who were their contemporaries.



Clayson illuminates not only the imagery of prostitution--with its contradictory connotations of disgust and fascination-but also issues and problems relevant to women and men in patriarchal society. She discuses the conspicuous sexual commerce during this era and the resulting public panic about the deterioration of social life and mores. She describes the system that evolved of regulating prostitutes and the subsequent rise of clandestine prostitutes who escaped police regulation and who were condemned both for blurring social boundaries and for spreading sexual licentiousness in their moral and social superiors. Clayson argues that the subject of covert prostitution was especially attractive to vanguard painters because it embodied key notions of modernity: it exemplified the commercialization and the ambiguity of modern life.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• List of Illustrations (p. ix)
• Acknowledgments (p. xv)
• Introduction (p. xvii)
• Chapter 1 Painting the Traffic in Women (p. 1)
• Chapter 2 In the Brothel (p. 27)
• Chapter 3 Testing the Limits (p. 56)
• The Menace of Fashion (p. 56)
• The Invasion of the Boulevard (p. 93)
• Chapter 4 Suspicious Professions (p. 113)
• Working Women for Sale? (p. 113)
• Mutual Desire in the New Nightspots (p. 133)
• Notes (p. 155)
• Bibliography (p. 189)
• Index (p. 197)

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

As prostitution escalated in 19th-century Paris, it likewise appeared more frequently as a subject in French literature and art. Clayson (art history, Northwestern) reasons that there is a ``connection between, on the one hand, covert prostitution as subject matter and, on the other, evasiveness as narrational strategy among artists who operated within Impressionist circles during the 1870s and 1880s.'' Her unique, often complex, study analyzes the male artists' ``contradictory dialectic of disgust and fascination'' toward their female subjects. Clayson claims that their ``ambiguous depictions served to reinforce'' lowly female stereotypes. Amusing caricatures, extensive documentation, and good reproductions of Cezanne's Olympia series, Degas's monotypes of brothel scenes, and Manet's Nana support Clayson's feminist perceptions, adding new meaning to rather familiar artworks. Recommended for large art history and women's study collections.--Joan Levin, MLS, Chicago (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

CHOICE Review

Clayson deals with an important and fascinating topic the image of the prostitute in late 19th-century French painting. Societal conditions produced by the industrial revolution forced many poor working-class women of the 19th-century to turn to prostitution for their economic survival. This rise in prostitution was frequently interpreted as a threat to the moral structure of the bourgeois family and thus became a political issue. The author, a student of T.J. Clark (The Painting of Modern Life: Paris in the Art of Manet and his Followers, CH, Jun'85), delves further into some of the topics so tantalizingly presented by her mentor. While focusing on such major figures as Degas and Renoir, she discusses their paintings in the context of works by lesser-known artists such as Eva Gonzales and Henri Gervex. Her examination of these artists is built on a feminist-Marxist foundation and is polemic in tone. The text is amply illustrated with 93 illustrations, most in black and white, which are well chosen and present some interesting and little-known works by well-known artists including Manet and Cezanne, as well as works by artists popular in the 19th century but unfamiliar today. There is a useful bibliography and helpful index. Both undergraduate and graduate students in the humanities could benefit from this book.-E. Kosmer, Worcester State College

Author notes provided by Syndetics

Hollis Clayson is professor of art history at Northwestern University