Seductive Surfaces

Download or read book Seductive Surfaces written by Katharine Jordan Lochnan and published by Paul Mellon Ctr for Studies. This book was released on 1999 with total page 245 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Engaging, sophisticated, and witty, French-born artist James Joseph Tissot (1836-1902) painted for many years in London before returning to Paris in the 1880s. His works not only document contemporary fashion, manners, and mores, but also the paradoxes and anxieties of his age. In this book, ten contributors approach Tissot and his art from a variety of theoretical positions and disciplines to arrive at fresh and often startling insights. Looking both at and beneath Tissot’s seductive surfaces, the authors attempt to identify and decode the artist’s subtexts - issues of gender, class, and such ancillary topics as voyeurism, exhibitionism, fetishism, kitsch, and spiritualism.