Painting her pleasure

Three women artists and the nude in avant-garde Paris

Lauren Jimerson

• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Year: 2023
• eBook ISBN: 9781526159823
• Topic: Kunst
• Subtopic: Kunstgeschichte der Moderne

This book examines nudes by three women: Suzanne Valadon, Émilie Charmy and Marie Vassilieff. Working in avant-garde Paris, these artists pioneered modern body imagery, expressing female subjectivity and sexuality in paint.Valadon, Charmy and Vassilieff experimented with the male nude, Black female nude, pregnant nude and nude self-portrait, a genre which few artists tackled until half a century later. Flouting the period's scientific discourses and social mores, they breached assumptions about 'feminine' art and unhinged expectations about the type of subject a woman could paint.Contextualising their work within and against modernism, drawing parallels with later feminist artists and philosophers, this interdisciplinary book unravels the complexities of early twentieth-century gender regimes and persistent cultural stereotypes, providing an illuminating history of women, sexuality and the body.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of plates
• List of figures
• Acknowledgements
• Note on text
• Dedication
• Introduction: Naked ambition – women artists and the modern nude
• 1 “Ni homme, ni femme”: Marie Vassilieff’s androgyny
• 2 Painting pleasure: Émilie Charmy and aesthetics of female jouissance
• 3 Suzanne Valadon: a man as her muse
• Conclusion: Subversive sexualities
• Select bibliography
• Index
• Plates