Édouard Vuillard, the Nabis, and the Politics of Domesticity

Author: Francesca Berry Series: Material Culture of Art and Design

Hardcover

This ground-breaking book is the first to address the feminine and feminist politics of domesticity in the Intimiste art of Édouard Vuillard and the Nabis.

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Summary

This ground-breaking book is the first to address the feminine and feminist politics of domesticity in the Intimiste art of Édouard Vuillard and the Nabis.

Description

This ground-breaking book is the first to address the feminine and feminist politics of Intimiste art - a modernist mode of art making developed in the 1890s by Édouard Vuillard while associated with the Nabi 'brotherhood'.

Coined by contemporary critics, 'intimisme' encapsulated the shared approach of these artists to depicting intimate settings and themes. Vuillard's paintings, which are typically small, employ bold pigments and economic brushstrokes to depict female figures in tightly composed apartment interiors. Those portrayed include his mother and sister, just as wives and lovers dominate the art of other Nabis, including Maurice Denis and Pierre Bonnard.

Francesca Berry comparatively analyses the gender politics of Nabi art to reveal real differences. Through skilled visual interpretation she argues that Vuillard attempted a profound engagement with the material conditions of feminine domesticity in cooperation with his first and most sustained audience: women. He did so, the author reveals, in artworks that explore a complex range of feminine experiences such as sexual initiation, stillbirth, illicit work, and unceasing housework. The personal gender politics of Intimiste practice also are foregrounded. Vuillard's studio-bedroom afforded him access to quotidian femininity. But at what risks to his sister's privacy and to his mother's subjectivity?

Making an artistic project of feminine domesticity also meant entering the field of politics. The 1890s was the decade of state legislation and feminist demands with respect to work in the home and women's familial rights. Personal in motif and Symbolist in form, Berry's extensive historical research reveals these artworks also to have been social and political, sometimes even feminist, in meaning. Transcending the structural repression of domesticity in histories of modernist art, this book powerfully overturns residual myths of aesthetic introspection and social retreat that for too long have been attached to Nabi Symbolism.

Critic Reviews

This thought-provoking and timely book sheds new light not only on Vuillard, but on the role of politics in the art of the Nabis. Richly illustrated and ambitious in scope and depth, it marks an exciting way forward for feminist interpretations of modernity. Claire Moran, Reader in French Studies, Queen’ s University Belfast, UK
Berry plots a masterful feminist analysis of Vuillard’s representations of “feminine domesticity.” Training her sharp eye on the images’ complex material layers, she reveals his equally complex engagement with social and political contexts. Impeccably researched, this book will quickly become indispensable. Marni Kessler, Professor and Director of Graduate Studies, Kress Foundation Department of Art History, University of Kansas, USA
Berry’s sustained engagement with the complex discourses surrounding domesticity and femininity greatly enrich our understanding of Vuillard’s avant-garde project. In five deeply researched chapters, Berry exposes an overlooked side of the artist and his oeuvre, and offers new methodologies towards a more inclusive art history. It is a bold and dazzling contribution to the Nabi literature. Mary Weaver Chapin, Curator of Prints and Drawings, Portland Art Museum, Oregon, USA
With its thrilling feminist analyses of the often-disquieting art of Vuillard and the Nabis, Berry’s book reveals the surprisingly modern politics at play in artworks dependent on women’s labour and at times radically collaborative…a powerful contribution to art’s feminist histories. Allison Morehead, Professor of Art History, Queen’s University, Canada

About the Author

Francesca Berry is Associate Professor of History of Art at University of Birmingham, UK. She is an expert in the art, visual culture and design of domesticity and the interior in France 1850–1940 and has published extensively in this field.