TY - JOUR
T1 - Vallotton, fénéon, and the legacy of the commune in fin-de-siècle France
AU - Alsdorf, Bridget
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 University of Nebraska Press. All rights reserved.
PY - 2021/6
Y1 - 2021/6
N2 - This article explores the Paris Commune's conflicted legacy in fin-de-siècle France through a set of portraits by the Franco-Swiss artist Félix Vallotton. In 1897 the critic and anarchist Félix Fénéon published a questionnaire about the Commune in La Revue blanche with responses from a wide range of surviving participants and eyewitnesses. Vallotton supplemented these reflections with drawings of leaders, many of whom were long dead, from both sides of the barricades. These portrait heads, and their placement vis-à-vis the text, capture the complexity of the Commune's ideological afterlife in deceptively simple form, showing Vallotton's keen sensitivity to the political debates and uncertainties of his time. Like many of the artist's politically charged prints published throughout the 1890s, these portraits convey profound ambivalence about the relationship between the Parisian people and the state.
AB - This article explores the Paris Commune's conflicted legacy in fin-de-siècle France through a set of portraits by the Franco-Swiss artist Félix Vallotton. In 1897 the critic and anarchist Félix Fénéon published a questionnaire about the Commune in La Revue blanche with responses from a wide range of surviving participants and eyewitnesses. Vallotton supplemented these reflections with drawings of leaders, many of whom were long dead, from both sides of the barricades. These portrait heads, and their placement vis-à-vis the text, capture the complexity of the Commune's ideological afterlife in deceptively simple form, showing Vallotton's keen sensitivity to the political debates and uncertainties of his time. Like many of the artist's politically charged prints published throughout the 1890s, these portraits convey profound ambivalence about the relationship between the Parisian people and the state.
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U2 - 10.1353/NCF.2021.0009
DO - 10.1353/NCF.2021.0009
M3 - Review article
AN - SCOPUS:85102590487
SN - 0146-7891
VL - 49
SP - 258
EP - 281
JO - Nineteenth-Century French Studies
JF - Nineteenth-Century French Studies
IS - 3
ER -