The Female Spectator of Modern Art and the Spectacle of Medicalized Femininity

Abstract

The first comprehensive assessment of Degas's legacy to be published in over two decades, Perspectives on Degas unites a team of international scholars to analyze Degas's work, artistic practice, and unique methods of pictorial problem-solving. Established scholars and curators show how recent trends in art historical thinking can stimulate innovative interpretations of Degas's paintings, prints, sculptures, and drawings and reveal new ideas about his place in the art historical narrative of the nineteenth-century avant-garde. Questions posed by contributors include: what interpretive approaches are open to a new generation of art historians in the wake of a vast body of existing scholarship on nineteenth-century art? In what ways can feminist analyses of Degas's works continue to yield new results? Which of Degas's works have received less attention in critical literature to date and what does study of them reveal? As the centenary of Degas's death approaches, this book offers a timely re-evaluation of the critical literature that has developed in response to Degas's work and identifies ways in which the further study of this artist's multi-faceted output can deepen our understanding of the wider scientific, literary, and artistic ideas that circulated in France during the latter decades of the nineteenth century.