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- Title
Reading Cisheteronormativity into the Art Historical Archives.
- Authors
Ringelberg, Kirstin
- Abstract
Madeleine Lemaire (1845–1928) might appear to be a typical "woman artist" of the Belle Époque, a painter of images of fashionable women, equally popular for her watercolor flowers and her skills as a salon hostess, with biographical sketches of her then and now assuming that if she had sex or romance, it was with men. However, a closer look has also revealed Lemaire to be potentially atypical. Unlike her women colleagues, she exhibited salacious nudes; her work was once described as having "a bit of the mustache"; and she generally dodged discussions of either her gender or her sexuality, even though her social group included those who openly flaunted their own non-conformities. Using archival materials, artworks, and contemporary theory to unpack the possibilities presented by Lemaire's case, I also explore the gains for art history in reconsidering previously female-identified and straight-seeming artists in more fluid gender and sexual terms. What might we discover if we recognize ourselves as the constructors of a cisheteronormative past, reading into the archives the assumptions that our current culture's binary norms enforce?
- Subjects
ART archives; HISTORICAL libraries; SOCIAL groups; GENDER identity; ART history; WOMEN artists
- Publication
Arts (2076-0752), 2024, Vol 13, Issue 3, p89
- ISSN
2076-0752
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.3390/arts13030089