ARTH 3312 Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: Nicolas Lancret, The Birdcage, Peter Paul Rubens
Document Summary
About artifice and theatre as a metaphor for aristocratic life. Strong part of daily life for aristocrats. Delicacy of touch, color, light: pleasures of the dance. Fete galante, architecture framing, figures mostly coupled. Costumes from multiple time periods - fantasy. Reality is stylized, ritualized, level of fiction. Extreme right is a self portrait of watteau wearing costume of stock character - captain of farce: the intimate toilet. Woman is not a goddess, she is undisguised. Takes potentially pornographic and elevates to above that. Originally forbidden scene to male gaze: reclining nude. Broadly painted, more like an oil sketch. No over suggestion that she is a goddess. Painting based off of drawing of the remedy - enema. Documented medical practice but erotic subject of the time. Very dark background - uncommon fro watteau: pierrot (or gilles) Foil for harlequin who is clever and witty. Left man is a doctor, red character is captain of the farce.
