The Empire of the Senses. From Boucher to Greuze.
Paris Museums| N° d'inventaire | 23301 |
| Format | 22 x 28 |
| Détails | 152 p., paperback. |
| Publication | Paris, 2020 |
| Etat | Nine |
| ISBN | 9782759605002 |
Under the brush of the best painters, we have lost count of the bucolic scenes where shepherds and shepherdesses flirt, the boudoirs where languid sighs and lustful glances are exchanged, the alcoves where "the heart and the mind" (Crébillon fils, 1736) wander. However, in this ocean of images devoted to Love, we have hardly emphasized the audacity and originality, sometimes even the extreme license, of certain inventions. Only Jean-Honoré Fragonard, "the painter of love, gallant and libertine brought to light by the exhibition of Guillaume Faroult (2015), stands out today as an alter ego of Sade, Casanova and other Choderlos de Laclos, sulphurous bards of 18th-century Eros. Yet the author of The Lock at the Louvre Museum, far from being an isolated figure, is part of an iconographic tradition developed throughout the century, but which has remained too little studied to this day. Consider Antoine Watteau's Nude Woman Removing Her Chemise Close to Our Eyes, Jean-Baptiste Greuze's Volupté, a striking evocation of female orgasm, or François Boucher's disturbing Odalisques, depicted naked, languid on a sofa, their buttocks as if offered to the viewer. On the occasion of the anniversary of the death of François Boucher (1703-1770), the exhibition at the Cognacq-Jay Museum aims to explore the theme of Love in its most licentious form, through the prism of Boucher's creations and those of his contemporaries. The aim is to show how François Boucher, the first painter to King Louis XV, established himself as one of the central figures in the development of erotic art in the 18th century. It must be admitted that without Boucher's inventions, we would not be able to understand the audacity of the libertine Fragonard.
Under the brush of the best painters, we have lost count of the bucolic scenes where shepherds and shepherdesses flirt, the boudoirs where languid sighs and lustful glances are exchanged, the alcoves where "the heart and the mind" (Crébillon fils, 1736) wander. However, in this ocean of images devoted to Love, we have hardly emphasized the audacity and originality, sometimes even the extreme license, of certain inventions. Only Jean-Honoré Fragonard, "the painter of love, gallant and libertine brought to light by the exhibition of Guillaume Faroult (2015), stands out today as an alter ego of Sade, Casanova and other Choderlos de Laclos, sulphurous bards of 18th-century Eros. Yet the author of The Lock at the Louvre Museum, far from being an isolated figure, is part of an iconographic tradition developed throughout the century, but which has remained too little studied to this day. Consider Antoine Watteau's Nude Woman Removing Her Chemise Close to Our Eyes, Jean-Baptiste Greuze's Volupté, a striking evocation of female orgasm, or François Boucher's disturbing Odalisques, depicted naked, languid on a sofa, their buttocks as if offered to the viewer. On the occasion of the anniversary of the death of François Boucher (1703-1770), the exhibition at the Cognacq-Jay Museum aims to explore the theme of Love in its most licentious form, through the prism of Boucher's creations and those of his contemporaries. The aim is to show how François Boucher, the first painter to King Louis XV, established himself as one of the central figures in the development of erotic art in the 18th century. It must be admitted that without Boucher's inventions, we would not be able to understand the audacity of the libertine Fragonard.