{"id":2540,"date":"2017-12-01T00:00:18","date_gmt":"2017-12-01T05:00:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sequitur\/?p=2540"},"modified":"2018-09-13T14:32:07","modified_gmt":"2018-09-13T18:32:07","slug":"kramer-marchande","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sequitur\/2017\/12\/01\/kramer-marchande\/","title":{"rendered":"La Marchande d\u2019Amour<\/i> : The Commodification of Flesh and Paint"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/a>
Figure 1. Gustav Adolf Mossa, La Marchande d\u2019Amour, <\/i><\/i>1904, Watercolor and pen on paper, 10 x 20 in. Mus\u00e9e des Beaux-Arts \u2013 Nice. \u00a9 2017 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York \/ ADAGP, Paris<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Ni\u00e7ois watercolorist and oil painter, Gustav Adolf Mossa (1883-1971) exaggerated and satirized popular nineteenth-century motifs by coating his compositions with caricature. In turn, his oeuvre is slippery, referencing multiple\u2014even conflicting\u2014styles and tropes especially evident in the watercolor <\/span>La Marchande d\u2019Amour<\/span><\/i> (1904) (Figure 1). Mossa crowds\u00a0<\/span>La Marchande d\u2019Amour<\/span><\/i> with references ranging from classical subjects to stereotypical modern masculine types with a critical and comical wit. His multilayered pastiche satirizes artistic production, comparing it to the commodification of flesh enacted by a Venus-like merchant who butchers and sells female cupids to a sea of waiting male customers. By comparative analysis, I will argue that Mossa\u2019s complex layering of recognizable artistic motifs, including classical iconography and modern types, supports a self-reflexive interpretation of the production and commodification of art as akin to prostitution.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/a>
Figure 2. Roman, The Cupid Seller<\/em>, 1-50 AD, Fresco, 8.88 x 7.31 in. From the Villa di Arianna at Stabiae. Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Naples, Italy \/ Bridgeman Images<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

La Marchande d\u2019Amour<\/span><\/i> is a critical reinterpretation of a centuries-old motif, which shaped romanticized neoclassical aesthetic preferences. When the ancient <\/span>Cupid Seller<\/span><\/i> fresco was discovered during the excavation of Pompeii between 1748 and 1763 (Figure 2), it inspired Joseph-Marie Vien to paint one of the earliest French neoclassical works, likewise named <\/span>The Cupid Seller<\/span><\/i> (Figure 3).[1]<\/span><\/a>\u00a0<\/span>Lauded as a return to the true ancient arts, Vien\u2019s painting inspired everything from cupid seller-themed fabric designs to marble reliefs (Figure 4). Print reproductions of the ancient fresco and Vien\u2019s neoclassical adaptation were widely distributed, further establishing the cupid seller motif as part of the public\u2019s visual vocabulary.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/a>
Figure 3. Joseph-Marie Vien, The Cupid Seller<\/em>, 1763, Oil on canvas, 46.06 x 55.12 in.\u00a0Mus\u00e9e National Du Ch\u00e2teau De Fontainebleau. (Image in Public Domain)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Where Vien\u2019s popular eighteenth-century version of\u00a0<\/span>The Cupid Seller<\/span><\/i>\u00a0omits erotic subtleties included in the classical Roman original, such as a peeping cupid from between the woman\u2019s legs, Mossa responds with an unabashedly sexualized reinterpretation. Instead of reiterating the traditional exchange of cupids sold between females and staged in a private setting, Mossa\u2019s commercial merchant sells decidedly female fairy-like cupids to a range of typed European and colonial male consumers, emphatically reinterpreting the motif in terms of commodified female bodies, and more precisely prostitution. The international crowd and Parisian locale, registered by the \u201cBatignolles\u201d sign in the distant background, alludes to the Exposition Universelle that Mossa attended in 1900; but instead of perusing the world\u2019s showcases of art and technology, Mossa\u2019s crowd is lured toward the <\/span>Marchande d\u2019Amour<\/span><\/i>.[2]<\/span><\/a> <\/span> By situating the theme in a modern context, Mossa collapses the distance between classical allegory and modern reality, transforming the trope from the source of a classical revival of \u201ctrue art\u201d into a criticism of artistic commodification.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/a>
Figure 4. Detail: Louis Hippolyte Lebas, La Marchande d\u2019Amours<\/em>,\u00a0c. 1816, Cotton textile, 90 x 99 in. Metropolitan Museum of Art,\u00a0New York. (Image in Public Domain)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Nineteenth- and early twentieth-century artists and art critics frequently alluded to the era\u2019s ruling Venus, the prostitute, when discussing the commodification of aesthetic labor. \u00c9mile Zola exemplified the ease with which writers compared prostitution to artistic practice. In response to the shocked public reception of the then-scandalous <\/span>Olympia<\/span><\/i>, he defended \u00c9douard Manet by satirizing the public\u2019s reaction as akin to that of prostitution, saying \u201cthe arts, painting, is for them the great Impure, the Courtesan who is always famished for young flesh.”[3]<\/span><\/a> <\/span> Moreover, he addresses the public perception that art disrupts domesticity by jokingly calling it \u201cthe orgy, debauchery without pardon, the bloody specter that from time to time raises itself within families and disturbs the peace of domestic homes.\u201d[4]<\/a>\u00a0<\/span><\/span>Zola leveraged prostitution\u2019s threatening preeminence to satirize the comparatively unaccountable threat felt toward artworks such as Manet\u2019s. <\/span><\/p>\n

As Leo Bersani has persuasively argued, Charles Baudelaire also compared art with prostitution to communicate their shared potential to navigate the interstices between love and desire, spirituality and extra-bodily experience, and power and vulnerability.[5]<\/span><\/a>\u00a0<\/span>In his squibs on the nature of art and prostitution, Baudelaire wrote, \u201cWhat is art? Prostitution,\u201d alluding throughout <\/span>Journaux Intimes<\/span><\/i> that artistic exchanges require the giving up of oneself to another.[6]<\/span><\/a> <\/span>Likewise in <\/span>La Marchande d\u2019Amour<\/span><\/i>, Mossa leverages the familiar analogy for his own purposes, underscoring comparatively exploitative systems of commodity exchange that place the sale of one\u2019s aesthetic labor on par with the sale of one\u2019s body.<\/span><\/p>\n

Further entangling this association, Mossa literally inscribes commercialized prostitution in the artistic language of the signposts and texts throughout the painting. Purposefully naming the merchant\u2019s neighboring stores \u201ccoiffeur d\u2019art\u201d and \u201c\u00e9picerie d\u2019art,\u201d these art-hairstylists and art-grocers textually situate <\/span>La Marchande d\u2019Amour<\/span><\/i>, a prostitute or madam, as complicit in the production of artistic commodities. Mossa also inscribed \u201cHORS CONCOURS \/ MEDAILLE D\u2019OR \/ EN 1900\u201d in bold black ink on a heart-shaped tag atop the preservation jar of a dead fetal cupid. The phrase \u201chors concours\u201d was and is often used in art exhibitions to designate artwork submitted for exhibition, but not for competition or without competition. Significantly, \u201chors concours\u201d often identifies works that are overqualified and therefore disqualified. It connotes that the work is unrivalled. Mossa assigns the classical male cupid an \u201chors concours\u201d nomenclature and carefully preserves him in a reliquary. Rather than subjecting him to the butcher block like the entrapped female cupids, Mossa establishes a binary between what is and is not of social and aesthetic value. In this case, the valued or protected object is the classical male cupid while the female body is exploited to meet consumer demand.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/a>
Figure 5. F\u00e9licien Rops, Ma Fille, Monsieur Cabanel!<\/em>, n.d.,\u00a0Dry point on paper, 24.1 x 11.5 cm. Coll. mus\u00e9e F\u00e9licien Rops,\u00a0Province de Namur, inv. PER E0411.2.P<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

As in Mossa\u2019s <\/span>La Marchande d\u2019Amour<\/span><\/i>, Felicien Rops used language to pointedly criticize the art market, particularly in his print entitled <\/span>Ma Fille, Mr Cabanel<\/span><\/i> (Figure 5). Rops portrays an older woman offering to the viewer a young naked girl who shamefully hides her face beneath her raised hand. The faintest indication of socks and the bonnet on her head magnify her naked body in contrast to the heavily garbed madame, who wears a hat and is cloaked in a shawl and long dress. The provocative title, \u201cMa fille,\u201d a phrase of endearment meaning \u201cmy daughter,\u201d works against expectations of a protective mother who instead presents the girl\u2019s body for the viewer\u2019s consumption. Rops ties this antagonism to a specific consumer named Alexander Cabanel, a prominent Salon figure known for historical and mythological paintings featuring highly sensualized female nudes. For instance, his <\/span>La Naissance de Venus<\/span><\/i> (1863) depicts a suggestively postured, newly born Venus floating on seafoam.[7]<\/span><\/a> <\/span>The painting received a great deal of admiration, but Zola argued that Cabanel\u2019s Venus might offend were she not \u201ccradled in classical diapers,\u201d<\/span> drawing attention to Cabanel\u2019s classicism as thinly veiled sensuality.[8]<\/span><\/a>\u00a0<\/span>Ma Fille, Mr Cabanel<\/span><\/i> produces similar accusations through the language of prostitution. As Mossa uses language, specifically \u201chors concours,\u201d to evoke the Salon\u2019s privilege for assigning aesthetic value, Rops accuses Cabanel\u2014and by association the Salon\u2014of producing a system that is nothing more than veiled prostitution. <\/span><\/p>\n

Responding and contributing to contemporary writers\u2019 and artists\u2019 prostitution-themed vocabulary as a means to critique the Salon and art production in general, <\/span>La Marchande d\u2019Amour<\/span><\/i> entangles art with prostitution. Mossa situates the commodification of paint and flesh in a conversation that effectively amplifies the role of the market\u2019s morally complicit consumer, the hungry international crowd willing to purchase anything marketed as art. The consequence of their pleasurable commodities, as Mossa effectively argues, is the demise of lesser bodies entrapped by the system\u2014female prostitutes and, by analogy, artists. By glossing the classical <\/span>Cupid Seller<\/span><\/i> theme with satiric language and situating the merchant\u2019s store amidst artistic shops, he engages the visual language of the modern Venus-prostitute. Thinly veiled in a classical trope, she sells bodies instead of art as a comparison to the commodification of the art world.<\/span><\/p>\n

Cortney Anderson Kramer<\/span><\/h3>\n

Download Article<\/a><\/p>\n

_______________________________________________________________________<\/p>\n

[1]<\/span><\/a>\u00a0Thomas W. Gaehtgens and Russell Stockman, \u201c\u2018Love Fleeing Slavery\u2019: A Sketch in the Princeton University Art Museum,\u201d <\/span>Record of the Art Museum, Princeton University <\/span><\/i>65 (2006); 14.<\/span><\/p>\n

[2]<\/span><\/a> Richard Thomson, \u201cFantasies and Allegories of Vice,\u201d in <\/span>Splendours & Miseries: Images of Prostitution in France, 1850-1910<\/span><\/i>, ed. Richard Thomson et al. (Paris: Musee d\u2019Orsay, 2015), 211.<\/span><\/p>\n

[3]<\/span><\/a>\u00a0\u00c9mile Zola, <\/span>\u00c9d. Manet: \u00c9tude biographique et critique accompagn\u00e9e d\u2019un portrait d\u2019 \u00c9d. Manet par Bracquemond et d\u2019une eau-forte d\u2019\u00c9d. Manet d\u2019apr\u00e8s Olympia<\/span><\/i> (Paris: E. Dentu, 1867), 13. Original French: \u201cmais les arts, peinture eft pour eux la grande Impure, la Courtisane toujours affam\u00e9e de chair fraiche, qui doit boire le sang de leurs enfants & les tordre tout pantelants sur sa gorge insatiable.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

[4]<\/span><\/a> Ibid., 13. \u201cL\u00e0 eft l\u2019orgie, la d\u00e9bauche sans pardon, le spectre sanglant qui se dresse parfois au milieu des familles & qui trouble la paix des foyers domestiques.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

[5]<\/span><\/a> Leo Bersani, <\/span>Baudelaire and Freud<\/span><\/i> (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977), 8-15.<\/span><\/p>\n

[6]<\/span><\/a> Charles Baudelaire, \u201cJournaux intimes,\u201d in <\/span>Oeuvres compl\u00e8tes. Vol 1<\/span><\/i>, ed. Claude Pichois (Paris: Gallimard, 1975), 647\u2013709. \u201cQu est ce l\u2019art? Prostitution?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

[7]<\/span><\/a> For more information on Alexander Cabanel, see Michel Hilaire and Sylvain Amic, <\/span>Alexandre Cabanel, 1823-1889: la tradition du beau<\/span><\/i> (Paris: Somogy Editions d\u2019Art, Mus\u00e9e Fabre, 2010).<\/span><\/p>\n

[8]<\/span><\/a> \u00c9mile Zola, \u201cNos peintres au Champ-de-Mars,\u201d <\/span>La Situation<\/span><\/i> (July 1, 1867). \u201cBerc\u00e9 dans des langes classiques.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ni\u00e7ois watercolorist and oil painter, Gustav Adolf Mossa (1883-1971) exaggerated and satirized popular nineteenth-century motifs by coating his compositions with caricature. In turn, his oeuvre is slippery, referencing multiple\u2014even conflicting\u2014styles and tropes especially evident in the watercolor La Marchande d\u2019Amour (1904) (Figure 1). Mossa crowds\u00a0La Marchande d\u2019Amour with references ranging from classical subjects to stereotypical […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12490,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sequitur\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2540"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sequitur\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sequitur\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sequitur\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12490"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sequitur\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2540"}],"version-history":[{"count":47,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sequitur\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2540\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5549,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sequitur\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2540\/revisions\/5549"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sequitur\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2540"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sequitur\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2540"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sequitur\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2540"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}