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A riveting account of how misogyny shaped the work of six giants of modern art.
Delacroix, Courbet, Degas, Renoir, Gauguin and Picasso have long been considered essential figures in the history of modern art. They were wildly influential in their time and remain widely known – and loved – today.
But these six men were also unrepentant misogynists. They exploited and degraded women in ways that shocked their contemporaries. And their sexist views infused the artworks, allowing dangerous ideas about women’s roles and overall value to pervade our temples of culture.
In The misogynists, art historian Allison Leigh delves deep into the lives of these figures to show how they truly felt about women, how those beliefs shaped their art and how these facts have been brushed aside by collectors, curators and critics. Drawing on letters, contemporary criticism and scholarly biographies, Leigh crafts a thoroughly readable, engrossing mixture of historical narrative, art criticism and social analysis.
‘What I love about this book is that it is a cry of the heart. It takes its irresponsibility seriously: to tell the truth. For the truth can appear only in a passionate point of view, won and lost in personal experience. A beautiful story about what it is to teach and think about art history now.’
Alexander Nemerov, author of Fierce Poise: Helen Frankenthaler and 1950s New York
‘The misogynists will persuade open-minded readers that many of the much-vaunted innovations of Modernist painting are premised on violence towards women, both in paint and in person. It is a powerful, timely provocation, a call to arms that reminds us that the project of a feminist art history is more urgent than ever today.’
Tim Barringer, Paul Mellon Professor of the History of Art, Yale University
‘Written in an accessible and engaging style and beautifully illustrated, the book has the potential to forever change the way we look at these artists’ paintings of female nudes – and at the nude in art generally. May it lead to new ways of teaching and exhibiting the works in question.’
Petra Ten-Doesschate Chu, Professor Emerita of Art History, Seton Hall University
Introduction: misogyny, then and now
1 Eugène Delacroix: the sadist
2 Gustave Courbet: the pornographer
3 Edgar Degas : the misanthrope
4 Auguste Renoir: the chauvinist
5 Paul Gauguin: the predator
6 Pablo Picasso: the cannibal
Epilogue: what is to be done?
Index