Joy of Life (Suzanne Valadon)
| Joy of Life | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Artist |
Suzanne Valadon  |
| Year | 1911 |
| Medium |
oil paint, canvas |
| Location | Metropolitan Museum of Art |
| Accession No. |
67.187.113 |
| Identifiers | The Met object ID: 489551 |
Joy of Life (La Joie de vivre)[3] is a 1911 painting by Suzanne Valadon. It is in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.[4]
Description and interpretation
The work depicts women bathing as they are watched by a nude man.[5] The man is a depiction of Valadon's lover, Andre Utter, who was a model for Valadon.[6][7] The women are of solid body types.[3] The work is based on the theme of "women as nature," a typical subject of the time.[3]
Gill Perry writes that Valadon's Joy of Life reworks the theme of bathers-in-nature.[5] The poses of the women and the interpretation that they "seem strangely separate from each other, the male viewer and from the nature that surrounds them," suggests a "more ambiguous, dislocated relationship with both nature and the male spectator," according to Perry.[5] Perry's reading is echoed by Patricia Matthews, who describes the figures as being in nature, but not equivalent to nature.[3] Matthews writes that the male viewer "has no other role in the painting except as this near-caricature of the dominating male gaze."[6] She then argues that despite the male gaze, the women are unaware of being watched.[6] Rosemary Betterton felt that the figures disrupted the male gaze and were in fact being caught in a moment of time without being sexualized.[3]
The painting itself, Matthews argues, does not offer a "coherent narrative that so clearly dominated masculinist images."[8] It is also, according to Matthews, part of the way in "which various narratives intersect in her work in often uncomfortable ways to dislodge and destabilize conventional gendered interpretations."[9]
References
Citations
- ↑ http://www.metmuseum.org/collection/the-collection-online/search/489551; retrieved: 21 June 2015.
- 1 2 http://www.metmuseum.org/collection/the-collection-online/search/489551; retrieved: 15 May 2015.
- 1 2 3 4 5 Matthews, Patricia (1991). "Returning the gaze: Diverse representations of the nude in the art of Suzanne Valadon". Art Bulletin. 73 (3): 415 – via EBSCOhost. (Subscription required (help)).
- ↑ "Joy of Life". Metropolitan Museum of Art.
- 1 2 3 Perry 2001, p. 669.
- 1 2 3 Matthews 1999, p. 199.
- ↑ Faxon, Alicia Craig (2001). "Utter, Andre". In Jimenez, Jill Berk. Dictionary of Artist's Models. London: Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers. p. 529. ISBN 1579582338.
- ↑ Matthews 1999, p. 200.
- ↑ Matthews 1999, p. 202.
Sources
- Matthews, Patricia Townley (1999). Passionate Discontent: Creativity, Gender, and French Symbolist Art. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0226510182.
- Perry, Gill (2001). "Valadon, Suzanne". In Gaze, Delia. Concise Dictionary of Women Artists. New York: Routledge. ISBN 9781579583354.