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The Enduring Relevance of Eighteenth-Century French Painting" (2020)

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The Enduring Relevance of Eighteenth-Century French Painting Sotheby's Institute of Art Digital Commons @ SIA MA Theses Student Scholarship and Creative Work 2020 Reappraising the Rococo : The enduring relevance of eighteenth- century French painting Emma M. Woodberry Sotheby's Institute of Art Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.sia.edu/stu_theses Part of the Ancient, Medieval, Renaissance and Baroque Art and Architecture Commons Recommended Citation Woodberry, Emma M., "Reappraising the Rococo : The enduring relevance of eighteenth-century French painting" (2020). MA Theses. 62. https://digitalcommons.sia.edu/stu_theses/62 This Thesis - Open Access is brought to you for free and open access by the Student Scholarship and Creative Work at Digital Commons @ SIA. It has been accepted for inclusion in MA Theses by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons @ SIA. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Reappraising the Rococo: The Enduring Relevance of Eighteenth-Century French Painting by Emma M. Woodberry A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the Master’s Degree in Fine and Decorative Art and Design Sotheby’s Institute of Art 2020 13,185 words Reappraising the Rococo: The Enduring Relevance of Eighteenth-Century French Painting By: Emma M. Woodberry Often regarded as purely decorative, obsolete, and inconsequential, the rococo paintings of eighteenth-century France acquire historical significance and contemporary resonance once interpreted with fresh eyes. After the French Revolution, rococo paintings were associated with the politics and aristocracy of the ancien régime, a conflation that has colored aesthetic reputation of frivolity and artifice over the course of its history. This research centers on the claim that the rococo survived the Revolution, and continues to be called upon by contemporary artists as a productive artistic idiom. First, the cultural and aesthetic significance of eighteenth-century French rococo paintings will be considered with particular attention to Antoine Watteau, François Boucher, and Jean-Honoré Fragonard. Through a summary of its etymology and historiography of reception, a distinction can be made between the rococo’s intrinsic and acquired significations. Further, consideration of the rococo’s persistence as an artistic current of influence will be analyzed in the twentieth-century works of Florine Stettheimer and Andy Warhol, and the contemporary art of Yinka Shonibare and Genieve Figgis. By acknowledging the historical biases, multivalence, and historicity of the French rococo, this exploration engages with an effort to articulate alternative histories of modernism and the potential for reappraisal of the rococo. Table of Contents List of Illustrations ............................................................................................................... i Introduction ........................................................................................................................ 1 Chapters I. The Genesis of the Rococo: Origins, Etymology, and Discourse of the Modern ... 5 II. Revivals, Revisions, and Reception History of the Nineteenth Century ............... 21 III. The Rococo-esque: Idiosyncratic Expression in the Twentieth Century .............. 34 IV. Rococo-Appropriation and the Postmodern Condition ......................................... 45 Conclusion ......................................................................................................................... 54 Illustrations ........................................................................................................................ 57 Bibliography ...................................................................................................................... 66 i List of Illustrations Fig. 1. Jean-Honoré Fragonard, The Swing, 1767-1768; oil on canvas; 81 x 64 cm. The Wallace Collection, London. Fig. 2. François Boucher, The Four Seasons: Summer, 1755; oil on canvas, 57.2 x 72.7 cm. The Frick Collection, New York. Fig. 3. Gustave Courbet, Young Ladies on the Banks of the Seine (Summer), 1857; oil on canvas, 174 x 206 cm. Musée des Beaux-Arts, Paris. Fig. 4. Florine Stettheimer, Sunday Afternoon in the Country, 1917; oil on canvas; 198 x 92.5 cm. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland. Fig. 5. Andy Warhol, À La Recherche Du Shoe Perdu, circa 1957; 16 offset lithographs, 15 with hand-coloring, 247 x 348 mm (sheet dimensions); © 2021 Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; Courtesy of Sotheby’s. Fig. 6. Andy Warhol, Decorated Penis, circa 1957; ballpoint pen, dimensions unknown; The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh. © The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Fig. 7. Yinka Shonibare CBE, The Swing (after Fragonard), 2001; installation; overall dimensions unknown; Tate Gallery, London. Artistic work © Yinka Shonibare, courtesy Stephen Friedman Gallery, London, Photograph © Tate. Fig. 8. Genieve Figgis, The confession of love (after Fragonard), 2008; acrylic on canvas, 120 x 100 cm; Artistic work © Genieve Figgis, courtesy the artist and Almine Rech Gallery, London. Fig. 9. Genieve Figgis, Madame de Pompadour (after Boucher), 2016; acrylic on canvas, 39 x 31 in.; Jiménez-Colón Collection, Ponce, PR. Photograph © Jiménez - Colón Collection. ii Introduction Since its emergence in eighteenth-century France, rococo painting has been condemned as aristocratic, frivolous, artificial, and ultimately out-dated, dismissed by scholarly and popular opinion and relegated to the margins of Art History. Coinciding with the death of Louis XIV and the onset of the French Revolution, the “rococo period” is usually bracketed on art history timelines between the years 1715 and 1789. Most closely associated with Antoine Watteau, François Boucher, and Jean-Honoré Fragonard and exemplified through their paintings, the rococo style is often characterized by painterly gestures, idyllic and dynamic conceptions of nature, veiled eroticism, and glimpses of aristocratic leisure. Due to the extensive criticism of ancien regime society in post-Revolution France, its aesthetic considerations have been suppressed and its potential artistic achievements overlooked as 19th century critics conflated its depictions of the aristocracy with moral and political allegiance. In the words of art historian Mary Sherriff, “the rococo artists have never recovered from a revolution that left them despised and forgotten,”.1 Commenced by Remy Saissellin in the 19th century and Fiske Kimball in the 20th century, an emerging field of scholarship advocates for a retrospective assessment of the style, in an attempt to dispel centuries of perpetuated biases and articulate its historical importance. Additionally, a second strand of rococo scholarship has emerged within the 1 Mary D. Sheriff, Fragonard: Art and Eroticism (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1999), 2. 1 last few decades, nearly three hundred years after its apogee, distinguishing a strain of rococo influence that is observable in modern and contemporary art. Productive efforts towards a retrospective assessment of the rococo style have been initiated by cultural institutions in recent history, including the Cooper-Hewitt’s exhibition and catalogue, Rococo: The Continuing Curve, 1730-2008,2 and Oxford University’s publication of a collection of essays titled Rococo Echo: art, history, and historiography from Cochin to Coppola.3 These studies have firmly established the concept of the rococo’s survival from the eighteenth century into the modern epoch, but reassessments of the rococo and its revivals are often broad in scope, encompassing furniture, decorative arts, and the rococo as a transnational style. For the purpose of this particular reappraisal, the scope of my discussion is limited to the French rococo and subsequent usage of the term refers exclusively to the medium of painting, unless otherwise noted. In an effort to mitigate the perpetuated cultural biases that afflict its reputation, the rococo must be reconceptualized as two seperate yet entangled manifestations: as the eighteenth-century aesthetic impulse characterizing the paintings of Fragonard, Boucher, and Watteau, and as an atemporal current of influence that originated in the eighteenth century but has continued to evolve over the course of history and is identifiable the diverse oeuvres from nineteenth-century Gustave Courbet to twentieth-century Florine Stettheimer to living artists like Genieve Figgis. The existence of one rococo does not 2 Cooper-Hewitt Museum, Rococo: The Continuing Curve, 1730-2008, ed. Sarah Coffin (New York: Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, 2008). 3 Melissa Lee Hyde and Katie Scott, eds., Rococo echo: art, history and historiography from Cochin to Coppola. Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014). 2 negate the legitimacy of the other, as they are both generative within the realm of art historical discourse and relevant to the contemporary observer. Through an analysis of the political, social, and cultural discourse evoked by rococo paintings, past and present, the intention of this body of research is not to reimagine the Rococo or re-write history, but rather to re-examine, re-contextualize, and re-assess its cultural and aesthetic validity. In chapter one, I establish the historical basis for the unfavorable reputation of rococo paintings through a brief discussion its eighteenth century context and summarize its historical reputation
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