Bodies of Modernity: Figure and Flesh in Fin-De-Siecle France (Interplay)

Rating:
Summary: A Rebuke to Denver's "feminazi" comment
Review: Since the Denver, CO student is the only review on offer, I felt compelled to give more insight on this enlightening book and talented author. Even though "feminazi" is a highly offensive term, refuting it would catapult me into that very category(or so believed by the people who would actually use such a term). Regardless, I don't want to run the risk of undermining my message by spouting fervent feminist views. This book is not really about that. This book calls into question the socialization that has been reinforced for many centuries in western culture. Tamar Garb chooses a particular time--late 18th Century--and a particular culture--Paris--to deconstruct that socialization from a modern perspective and offer new insight on how social influence, and the strict gender constructions involved, are inescapable for the artist, himself being a product of that culture and social order. The female nude has long been the subject of high art, making the woman the object of the gaze. Art was created for patrons who could afford it, which were never women during this time for they scarcely worked and were certainly never the bread-winners of their households, and the art reflected that showing a woman in the role that those patrons, men, would want to see her: as the object of their sexual desire, as a societal symbol of status (by the way she dressed), as the goddess of their domestic realm. We of course take this for granted today in a society with much greater equality between the sexes, but in late 18th century France, social gender differentiation was extensive...and those social constructions influenced artists in the production of their work, just as they influenced every human being belonging to the culture, whether they were conscious of it or not. The most contemporary and current art-historical atmosphere is one in which modern art historians, scholars and critics are primarily concerned with looking at the art production of the past in a new light and offering some new perspective on it. There is more concern now with art as a product of a certain culture at a certain time, and it can be read as such--as a historical by-product, as it were. The feminist movement is a part of the current effort to call our socialization into question, but it's not the only movement involved, and to dismiss this book as entertainment for "feminazi's" as the above reader did is obtuse and quite ridiculous. This is a thorough examination of the gendered socialization of men as well as women in a particular cutlure and time that happened to produce some of our greatest artistic masterpieces. You'll find no women's liberation mantras in Garb's text, only a slow and thorough breakdown of the social aspects of the artistic environment in late 18th century Paris, how that influenced the artist, and how we can view in new light the artwork passed down to us from another time and place of which we have no first-hand knowledge....pure and simple! It's a great read.

Rating:
Summary: feminists will enjoy
Review: Yes, feminists will enjoy. But that is about all who will. I had to read this for a class. It does give some good information about artists, but most of the book is over-annalyzing and very over critical. It want's the artists to be very dirty old men who only think about sex when doing art. I think that it is a false commentary who many feminazis would enjoy.