Graduation Year
2011
Document Type
Thesis
Degree
M.L.A.
Degree Granting Department
Humanities and Cultural Studies
Major Professor
Annette Cozzi, Ph.D.
Committee Member
Andrew Berish, Ph.D.
Committee Member
Elaine Smith, Ph.D.
Keywords
Gender, Space, Nineteenth-century Art, Carnivalesque, Dialogical, Flâneur, Bohemian, Primitivist
Abstract
In this thesis I provide analysis of several nineteenth-century artworks in order to elucidate the connections between place and identity as expressed in visual representations of Paris. I utilize Bakhtin's idea of the dialogical as a means of identifying multiple subject positions that might be accessed by particular individuals who live in socially constructed spaces specific to fin-de-siècle Paris. I discuss the construction of three performed identities unique to nineteenth-century Paris: the Flâneur, the bohemian, and the primitivist. In each chapter I will parse out the social construction of the spaces where these identities existed and were performed, and link those identities to their discursive functions as particular models of Parisian life. I will discuss the relationship of each representation of identity to Henri Lefebvre's concept of socially-produced space through analysis of the stylistic and compositional choices made by the artist. The visual artworks I discuss include Edouard Manet's A Bar at the Folies-Bergère, Vincent van Gogh's The Outskirts of Paris, Night Café, and Café Terrace at Night, and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec's Jane Avril and Divan Japonais.
Scholar Commons Citation
Watts, Chelsea Anne, "Painting Parisian Identity: Place and Subjectivity in Fin-de-siecle art" (2011). USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations.
https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/etd/3403
