The Eye in Rut

Nudity, lasciviousness, sensuality, provocation, immodesty, obscenity or pornography.

During a 19^th century deemed to place a high value on of morality, eroticism took a new place in Western visual culture, notably thanks to the rise of reproduction processes such as photography, the press, theater and lithography. Literature fantasized about the romantic relationships between painters and their models, the nude became a commercial issue and realism revealed the rawness of the body.

This work revisits the major reflections carried out on the theme of nudity and sexuality in the field of art history and the history of sensibilities. By placing works in their context and comparing expressions and aesthetics, Claire Maingon opens new fields of reflection, while allowing us to discover little-known or forgotten artists such as Broc, Gavarni, Makart, Beaumont, Dubufe, Galimard, Ranft, Eakins and Lambeaux, alongside the great names in the history of 19^th-century art, David, Ingres, Delacroix, Courbet, Manet, Rodin, Gérôme, Falguière, Forain and Gervex.

Claire Maingon is a lecturer in contemporary art history at the University of Rouen. Director of the Sculptures magazine, she is notably the author of Les Chefs-d'oeuvre du patrimoine érotique, Beaux-Arts éditions, 2019, Les Scandales érotiques de l'art, Beaux-Arts éditions, 2016. She is also co-author of La Colonne Vendome, Éditions Norma, 2021.

Text in French only