Mary D. Sheriff's Books

The Exceptional Woman

Elisabeth Vigee-Lebrun and the Cultural Politics of Art

By: Mary D. Sheriff

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The Exceptional Woman

Elisabeth Vigee-Lebrun and the Cultural Politics of Art

By: Mary D. Sheriff

Elisabeth Vigee-Lebrun (1755-1842) was an enormously successful painter, a favorite portraitist of Marie-Antoinette, and one of the few women accepted into the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture. In her role as an artist, she was simultaneously flattered as a charming woman and vilified as monstrously unfeminine. In the Exceptional Woman, Mary D. Sheriff uses Vigee-Lebrun's career to explore the contradictory position of "woman-artist" in the moral, philosophical, professional, and medical debates about women in eighteenth-century France. Central to Sheriff's analysis is one key question: given the cultural norms and social attitudes that regulated a woman's activities, how could Vigee-Lebrun conceive of herself as an artist, and indeed become a successful one, in old-regime France. Paying particular attention to painted and textual self-portraits, Sheriff shows how Vigee-Lebrun's images and memoirs undermined the assumptions about "woman" and the strictures imposed on women. Engaging ancien-regime philosophy as well as modern feminism, psychoanalysis, literary theory, and art criticism, Sheriff's interpretations of Vigee-Lebrun's paintings challenge us to rethink the work of this controversial woman artist.

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Page Count

372

Publisher

University of Chicago Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0226752828

ISBN 13

9780226752822

The Exceptional Woman

Elisabeth Vigee-Lebrun and the Cultural Politics of Art

By: Mary D. Sheriff

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The Exceptional Woman

Elisabeth Vigee-Lebrun and the Cultural Politics of Art

By: Mary D. Sheriff

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372

Publisher

University of Chicago Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0226752828

ISBN 13

9780226752822

Moved by Love

Inspired Artists and Deviant Women in Eighteenth-Century France

By: Mary D. Sheriff

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Moved by Love

Inspired Artists and Deviant Women in Eighteenth-Century France

By: Mary D. Sheriff

In eighteenth-century France, the ability to lose oneself in a character or scene marked both great artists and ideal spectators. Yet it was thought this same passionate enthusiasm, if taken to unreasonable extremes, could also lead to sexual deviance, mental illness—even death. Women and artists were seen as especially susceptible to these negative consequences of creative enthusiasm, and women artists, doubly so. Mary D. Sheriff uses these very different visions of enthusiasm to explore the complex interrelationships among creativity, sexuality, the body and the mind in eighteenth-century France. Drawing on evidence from the visual arts, literature, philosophy, and medicine, she portrays the deviance ascribed to both inspired men and women. But while various mythologies worked to normalize deviance in male artists, women had no justification for their deviance. For instance, the mythical sculptor Pygmalion was cured of an abnormal love for his statue through the making of art. He became a model for creative artists, living happily with his statue come to life. No happy endings, though, were imagined for such inspired women writers as Sappho and Heloise, who burned with erotomania their art could not quench. Even so, Sheriff demonstrates, the perceived connections among sexuality, creativity, and disease also opened artistic opportunities for creative women took full advantage of them. Brilliantly reassessing the links between sexuality and creativity, artistic genius and madness, passion and reason, Moved by Love will profoundly reshape our view of eighteenth- century French culture.

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Page Count

318

Publisher

University of Chicago Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0226752844

ISBN 13

9780226752846

Enchanted Islands

Picturing the Allure of Conquest in Eighteenth-Century France

By: Mary D. Sheriff

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Enchanted Islands

Picturing the Allure of Conquest in Eighteenth-Century France

By: Mary D. Sheriff

In Enchanted Islands, renowned art historian Mary D. Sheriff explores the legendary, fictional, and real islands that filled the French imagination during the ancien regime as they appeared in royal ballets and festivals, epic literature, paintings, engravings, book illustrations, and other objects. Some of the islands were mythical and found in the most popular literary texts of the day—islands featured prominently, for instance, in Ariosto’s Orlando furioso,Tasso’s Gerusalemme liberata, and Fénelon’s, Telemachus. Other islands—real ones, such as Tahiti and St. Domingue—the French learned about from the writings of travelers and colonists. All of them were imagined to be the home of enchantresses who used magic to conquer heroes by promising sensual and sexual pleasure. As Sheriff shows, the theme of the enchanted island was put to many uses. Kings deployed enchanted-island mythology to strengthen monarchical authority, as Louis XIV did in his famous Versailles festival Les Plaisirs de l’île enchantée. Writers such as Fénelon used it to tell morality tales that taught virtue, duty, and the need for male strength to triumph over female weakness and seduction. Yet at the same time, artists like Boucher painted enchanted islands to portray art’s purpose as the giving of pleasure. In all these ways and more, Sheriff demonstrates for the first time the centrality of enchanted islands to ancient regime culture in a book that will enchant all readers interested in the art, literature, and history of the time.

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Page Count

306

Publisher

University of Chicago Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

022648324X

ISBN 13

9780226483245

Moved by Love

Inspired Artists and Deviant Women in Eighteenth-Century France

By: Mary D. Sheriff

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Moved by Love

Inspired Artists and Deviant Women in Eighteenth-Century France

By: Mary D. Sheriff

No happy endings, though, were imagined for such inspired women writers as Sappho and Heloise, who burned with an erotomania their art could not quench. Even so, Sheriff demonstrates that the perceived connections among sexuality, creativity, and disease also opened artistic opportunities for women - and creative women took full advantage of them."--BOOK JACKET.

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Page Count

336

Publisher

University of Chicago Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0226752879

ISBN 13

9780226752877

Renoir

Rococo Revival

By: Alexander Eiling,Juliane Betz,Fabienne Ruppen,Guillaume Faroult,Marine Kisiel,Michela Bassu,Astrid Reuter,Matthias Krüger,Mary G. Morton

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Renoir

Rococo Revival

By: Alexander Eiling,Juliane Betz,Fabienne Ruppen,Guillaume Faroult,Marine Kisiel,Michela Bassu,Astrid Reuter,Matthias Krüger,Mary G. Morton

Wie kaum ein anderer Künstler hat Pierre-Auguste Renoir unser Verständnis von den stimmungsvollen Figurenbildern des Impressionismus geprägt. Sein Gemälde La fin du déjeuner, das sich seit 1910 im Städel Museum in Frankfurt befindet, ist nun Ausgangspunkt für eine weitreichende Auseinandersetzung mit einer für ihn zeitlebens bedeutenden Inspirationsquelle: dem Rokoko. Galt diese Malerei nach der französischen Revolution als frivol und unmoralisch, so erlebte sie im 19. Jahrhundert eine Renaissance und war zu Lebzeiten Renoirs überaus präsent. Dieser umfangreiche Band erscheint anlässlich der großangelegten Ausstellung des Städel Museums und untersucht Renoirs facettenreiche Traditionsverbundenheit ausgehend von erhellenden Gegenüberstellungen seiner Kunst mit Werken des 18. Jahrhunderts sowie von Zeitgenossen.

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Age

Page Count

328

Publisher

Hatje Cantz Verlag

Published Date

ISBN 10

3775751343

ISBN 13

9783775751346

Book's by Mary D. Sheriff

The Exceptional Woman

The Exceptional Woman

The Exceptional Woman

The Exceptional Woman

Moved by Love

Moved by Love

Enchanted Islands

Enchanted Islands

Moved by Love

Moved by Love

Renoir

Renoir

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