Passionate Discontent: Creativity, Gender, and French Symbolist Art

by Patricia Mathews

Passionate Discontent is an erudite study of the relationship between gender and genius in late nineteenth-century French Symbolism. Born in an era of crisis, the Symbolist art movement was characterized by withdrawal to a mystical, antibourgeois world of the mind and spirit. While Symbolists idealized the "poète maudit," a creative, mad genius exhibiting an emotional state of heightened awareness and "passionate discontent," female artists displaying similar symptoms were dismissed as hysterical.

Art historian Patricia Mathews traverses the artistic, social, and scientific discourses of fin-de-siècle France in order to illuminate the Symbolist construction of a feminized aesthetic that nonetheless excluded female artists from its realm. Along the way, Mathews proffers important new readings of the art of such Symbolists as Gauguin, van Gogh and Moreau, as well as that of their female contemporaries Camille Claudel and Suzanne Valadon. Passionate Discontent is an important contribution to art historical and women's studies.

Genres: Art, Nonfiction

323 pages, Hardcover

First published April 15, 2000

Reviews

[Molly Blanchard · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is unequivocally my favorite book of all time--it was a pivotal resource in the development of my Master's thesis on Munch's depiction of the femme fatale. Year after year, I pick up this book to reread and relearn.