Nude to Naked: An Analysis of Carpeaux’s Three Graces
Student Name ArtH 3012: 19th and 20th Century Art Term Paper Dr. Gabriel Weisberg, Liz Fowler 13 November 2003
Art at the beginning of the 19th century was dominated by the masters of Neoclassicism. David in painting and Canova in sculpture created epic works of ideal beauty and controlled expression which answered the call of critics and writers to create art that would moralize, edify, and instruct. These recent artistic achievements, along with those of the masters before them, presented artists throughout the 19th century with the dual challenge to not only measure up to the artistic ability of their predecessors but to also distinguish themselves from them. This challenge was one to which many artists proved unequal and perhaps explains why of the four monumental allegorical sculpture groups commissioned for the façade of the Paris Opera, Chu dismisses three as unimaginative repetitions of Neoclassical prototypes.i In his Genius of the Dance (ill. 5), Carpeaux alone among the four responded to the evolving artistic and social trends of his time while simultaneously casting an eye to the art of the past. In his plaster model The Three Graces, I will argue that Carpeaux further refined his composition to magnify and expose the artistic and social contradictions of the Second Empire, a period in which academic art was praised for its affirmation of the traditional, while art which sought to acknowledge the licentiousness thriving just beneath the sanctimonious surface of society was often disparaged. ii Carpeaux’s Three Graces (ill. 1), which resides in the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, is approximately 3’ tall and rests on a circular aqua marble or marbleized pedestal. Resting on this pedestal is a smaller circular plaster base out of which the sculpture grows. The sculpture is composed of three almost entirely uncovered female figures who appear absorbed in frolicking dance around a central leafy bush. iii The sculpture is constructed in the round and must be fully circumnavigated to be viewed in its entirety. The women join hands in their dance, two facing outward, while the third faces inward. Each woman touches only a single foot to the ground as if caught mid-step, an element which adds to an initial sense of movement and joviality in the piece. The sculpture is dated to about 1872, a rather unexpected date as Carpeaux’s Genius of the Dance, which this composition greatly resembles, was executed four years earlier in 1868.iv This curious 1
anachronism rules out discussion of The Three Graces as a preparatory model for The Genius of the Dance. Three possible explanations of the purpose of this plaster sculpture occur to me which I will list in order from that which I feel is most probable to that which I feel is least probable. 1.) That this is a study for a second full-size sculpture which Carpeaux intended to create from figures drawn from his infamous Genius of the Dance, much in the way Rodin drew independent sculptures from his larger sculptural composition, The Gates of Hell.v 2.) That Carpeaux wished to rework his composition to imply the three Graces specifically rather than the five women represented in The Genius of the Dance whom Chu identifies not as mythological figures per se but rather as simply “an entourage of nude and scantily dressed women.”vi It is also possible that Carpeaux wished to rework the composition to make it one which was fully in the round as opposed to the flattened composition of the figures in The Genius of the Dance which are pulled forward to accommodate the installation of the sculpture against a flat surface. 3.) That Carpeaux wished to have a smaller version of the work for himself in the vein of the small version of The Death of Sardanapalus exhibited at the Crossing the Channel show which was described as a copy which Delacroix had painted for himself. A desire for a personal copy could perhaps have been heightened by the mass destruction during the siege of Paris in the years between the execution of The Genius of the Dance and that of the plaster model of The Three Graces but would not explain why Carpeaux only recreated three figures from the composition rather than the composition in its entirety. The mystery surrounding the purpose of creation of the plaster model of The Three Graces does not, however, prevent a thorough analysis of the style Carpeaux employed in revising and amending the figures taken from his larger composition, The Genius of the Dance. The curve of the women’s torsos in The Three Graces initially implies a sense of coherent group movement in a clockwise direction. Closer inspection, however, reveals that only the footwork of the third figure could logically continue in this direction, while the footwork of the second implies movement in the opposite direction, and the footwork of the first suggests a nearly static pose. It is a group which has the deceptive initial appearance of a whole 2
but which can in fact only be fully understood if first approached individually—an approach which reveals idiosyncrasies in style as well as pose. The first figure (ill. 2) is the most visibly altered from the corresponding figure in The Genius of the Dance. Largely obscured from vision in the background of The Dance, she is given in The Three Graces equal prominence with the other two figures. As such, elements which are less noticeable in The Dance are heightened in her portrayal here and it becomes immediately more noticeable how much she differs in style from the other two figures. She is distinct not only in her static pose, left leg firmly planted and right knee only slightly bent, but also in her idealized features, serene expression, and hair bound up into a classical knot surrounded by a crown of grape leaves. She looks the least caught mid-hop, rather appearing quite detached from the raucous spirit of the moment, caught up in a world of her own. She is covered only slightly by a flowing cape which wraps around her left elbow, disappears behind her back, and ends in a trail around her right hip. As the most elegant and graceful of the figures, she evokes Neoclassical sculptural figures such as those in Canova’s rendering of the same subject matter (ill. 6). Her modest, downcast gaze with lips curving into a slight smile is reminiscent of the central model in Kauffman’s seminal work of Neoclassicism, Zeuxis Selecting Models for his Painting of Helen of Troy (ill. 7). Her pose is extremely similar to that of another sculpture in the MIA’s collection, Hebe and the Eagle of Jupiter (ill. 8), executed by François Rude, a fellow Romantic sculptor who similarly sought to contend with the Neoclassical art of the past.vii The arms of this first figure are held in an elegant S pose, her right arm curving above her head and her left arm falling at her side with hands gracefully turned to brush the fingers of the women next to her. Like the first woman, the second woman (ill. 3) also faces outward but her pose is more pronouncedly transitory. Only the ball of her left foot touches the ground, while her pointed right foot extends beyond the circular base of the sculpture. She stretches her arms outward behind her to grasp the hand of the third woman while lightly touching fingertips with the first. She is portrayed completely nude 3
save for a cape clasped above her left elbow with the end trailing around her left hip. Her long hair is caught at the nape of her neck and flows down her back into the leafy bush around which the women are posed. Her expression is much more vigorous than that of the first figure and her teeth are visible in her open mouthed smile. Her head, crowned by a laurel wreath, is tossed back as she gazes at the third woman behind her. The third woman (ill. 4) is posed similarly to the second in a manner which implies movement, but unlike the other two figures, she faces inward, exposing her back fully to the viewer. Her long hair is also gathered at the nape of her neck and flows freely across her back trailing against the side of the first figure. A braid strays over her left shoulder and her head is crowned not by a garland but rather by a pearl headband. Her expression, like that of the second figure from which she slightly averts her gaze, is also marked by an open mouthed grin with visible teeth. She is covered only by a stray branch reminiscent of the modesty branches in images of Adam and Eve, imagery which evokes as well connotations of the carnal nature of fallen man. The visible roles of fat where her side bends, together with her distinctive braid and jewelry, render her altogether the most suggestive of a “real” woman rather than an idealized classical figure. While only slightly altered from The Genius of the Dance, the change in the relationship of the women’s hands is a significant one. The corresponding figures in The Genius of the Dance do not link hands in a complete circle. Rather the third figure’s right hand is thrown up in abandon while the right hand of the first figure is firmly grasped by a hand which appears seemingly out of nowhere from behind the composition. In joining the hands of the first and third figures in the plaster study, Carpeaux allows their fingertips to barely brush each other. This detail is significant as the manner in which the much more boisterous second and third figures firmly grasp each other’s hand while barely touching the fingertips of the first figure, further heightens the stylistic and thematic isolation of the first figure who is the most sedate, static, idealized, and neo-classical of the three. Chu reports that Carpeaux was criticized for his portrayal 4
of realistically vulgar dance in his monumental composition, relaying the words of one critic who lamented that the women in The Genius of the Dance did not resemble classical figures. “Ah, if only those lost dancers were Greek women with their splendidly bodily attitudes and forms,” the critic wrote. “But no, no, look at those hard faces, which provoke the passerby with their furious grins. Look at those tired, sagging legs, those flaccid and deformed torsos, and, admit it, we are in the midst of the nineteenth century, in the midst of diseases and undressed Paris, in the midst of realism.viii In light of such criticism, it is possible that Carpeaux fully developed this first figure, which already displayed neo-classical tendencies in the original composition, into a full-blown artistic foil for his bawdier figures which had been so maligned. One possible reading of this first figure could suggest that it functioned both as a demonstration of Carpeaux’s ability to work in the Neoclassical style if he so chose, the very style which his critic had lamented that he had not embraced, as well as to serve as an implicit criticism of one of the basic deficiencies of the Neoclassical style—that for all of its beauty and moral grandeur, Neoclassical art is, like this first figure, detached from reality, lost in its own world, and in the end a whole lot less fun to look at than naked girls dancing orgiastically about. In arguing for a Neoclassical interpretation of the first figure, I do not wish to imply that the whole work should be considered in these terms. For, whatever stylistic elements of Neoclassicism this sculpture may retain in the first figure, it does not on the whole fulfill the Neoclassical aims to moralize, educate, or edify.ix The women in The Three Graces are certainly not the fully-clothed dancing muses of Mengs’s Parnassus (ill. 9). On the whole, this sculpture rather exhibits elements of common vulgarity similar to that which the Neoclassical advocate Diderot complained of in Vien’s Seller of Cupids, taking particular issue with the gesture of the cupid who demonstrates with his chubby arm the “size of the pleasure he promises.”x The grape vine which crowns the head of the first figure suggests a bacchanal settingxi and in this regard the sculpture bears several intriguing similarities to Auguste Clésinger’s Bacchante and Faun (ill. 10) 5
also in the collection of the MIA. Dated around the same times as The Three Graces, the figure of the Bacchante wears a similar grape vine crown and bears an expression quite like that of the second and third figures of Carpeaux’s sculpture, throwing her head backward with the same open-mouthed abandon toward the Faun who is seducing her. Carpeaux and Clésinger both treated their classical subject matter not as source of didactic beauty, but rather as an episode which was leering, sexually charged, and momentary. In this regard The Three Graces fulfills an earlier call of the art critic Stendhal for modern art to “express some human emotion[…]in a vivid manner intelligible to the general public.”xii Although this might not have been quite what Stendahl had in mind when he called for a new Romantic art some fifty years earlier, Carpeaux certainly fulfills one of the main aims of Romanticism in the figures of the two rowdy women—to portray a basic human experience in a manner which could be understood at a visceral level. It was a theme which the public certainly seemed to have little trouble grasping in The Genius of the Dance. Chu describes one contemporary caricature which depicted a wife chiding her husband, “Don’t look at them, that excites them even more!”xiii Having explored the style of each figure individually, I now wish to discuss their function as a group. The figures are indeed individually treated, but with a coherent purpose—to demonstrate various means of suggesting sensuality, sexuality, and eroticism. All three of the figures are uncovered, but they vary in degree of nudeness and nakedness and as such challenge what can be put on display.xiv In the 1860’s Manet had explored the nuances between the nakedness of modernity and the nudity of classical art in his recreations of Titian’s Pastoral Concert and Venus of Urbino into the compositions Luncheon on the Grass (ill. 11) and Olympia (ill. 12).xv In The Three Graces, Carpeaux similarly worked within the pretext of a traditional subject matter, which had been treated by such masters as Botticelli, Rubens, and Canova, to wittily break with tradition. Carpeaux uses classical subject matter not to edify and instruct but to put the licentiousness and hypocrisy of the Second Empire on full display—a society which embraced a
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Salon full of coyly nude Venuses, while rejecting Manet’s Luncheon on the Grass which suggested the real sexuality which thrived just beneath their society’s surface. In examining the figures in The Three Graces individually, a stylistic verisimilitude which may at first seem readily apparent begins to dissolve. As such, Carpeaux created a sophisticated composition which illustrated the growing distinction in art between classical nudity and modern nakedness—a notion which Carpeaux and artists such as Manet in the works discussed and Courbet in works such as The Sleepers (ill. 13) simultaneously began to explore, experiment with, and put on display in the 1860’s. By transforming the composition in The Three Graces into one that must be viewed in the round and by giving each of the figures equal prominence as well as by altering the relationships of the figures’ hands in a manner which heightens the sense of isolation and detachment of the first figure, Carpeaux provides within a single work a compact visual foil between the old and the new, the traditional and the shocking, the academic and the avant-garde.
Notes: Petra ten-Doesschate Chu, Nineteenth-Century European Art (New York: Harry N. Adams, 2003) 263. Ibid., 275. iii For the sake of facilitating discussion of the piece, I have numbered the figures one, two, and three. Ill. 1 denotes these labels. iv These dates are taken from the accompanying wall placard at the MIA. As this information was of a purely factual and not interpretive nature, I took the liberty of utilizing it. v Ibid., 480. vi Ibid., 263. vii While not discussing this piece specifically, Chu addresses Rude as a Romantic sculptor and discusses his relationship to the Neoclassical style which pervaded sculpture throughout much of the 19th century. Ibid., 221-22. viii Ibid., 263-64. ix Chu also discusses this. Ibid., 264. x Ibid., 51. xi Chu also refers to The Genius of the Dance as suggestive of “pagan bacchanalia.” Ibid., 263. xii Ibid., 200. xiii Ibid., 264. xiv In her discussion of Manet’s Luncheon on the Grass, Chu defines a specific distinction between nudity as, “an ideal human being in its natural state,” and nakedness as an “individual who has purposely taken off her clothes.” Ibid., 284. It is a distinction which I would argue is equally apparent in Carpeaux’s sculpture. xv Ibid., 285-86.
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