Article
The corset, the bicycle and the Hottentot: Alexandre Falguière’s The Dancer and Cléo de Mérode’s modern feminine body
Feminist Modernist Studies
(2018)
Abstract
In 1896, Alexandre Falguière’s sculpture The Dancer (La Danseuse), was the succès de scandale of the Salon des Artistes Français. While the public wondered whether the nude figure indeed represented Cléo de Mérode, a rising star in the ballet of the Opéra de Paris, art critics reacted with unusual vehemence to the work, labeling it a “modern” body and denouncing it as “deformed” or “damaged.” This essay examines the associations of deformity, femininity and modernity raised in the emphatic critical reception to the work. Through an investigation of the roles of the two principals in the sculpture’s production – the artist and the model – and of the critical reception to the work, it argues that this “modern” body proved troublesome to contemporary viewers, not only because it was seen as the likeness of a public celebrity, but also because the figure’s proportions resonated in complex and contradictory ways within contemporary discourses of dance, art, fashion and anthropology. The product of a collaboration between artist and model, the body portrayed in Falguière’s sculpture embodied not simply an individual dancer, but also changes in contemporary conventions governing feminine behavior – changes that were widely perceived as threatening.
Disciplines
Publication Date
2018
DOI
10.1080/24692921.2017.1370258
Citation Information
Susan Waller. "The corset, the bicycle and the Hottentot: Alexandre Falguière’s The Dancer and Cléo de Mérode’s modern feminine body" Feminist Modernist Studies Vol. 1 Iss. 1-2 (2018) p. 157 - 184 Available at: http://works.bepress.com/susan-waller/11/