Joy of Life (Suzanne Valadon)
Joy of Life (La Joie de vivre)[1] is an oil painting by Suzanne Valadon, completed in 1911.[2] It was bequeathed to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1967.[2]
| Joy of Life | |
|---|---|
| French: La Joie de vivre | |
 | |
| Artist | Suzanne Valadon |
| Year | 1911 |
| Medium | Oil on canvas |
| Dimensions | 122.9 cm × 205.7 cm (46 3/8 in × 81 in) |
| Location | Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City |
| Accession | 67.187.113 |
Description and interpretation
Suzanne Valadon's Joy of Life depicts a landscape with four nude and seminude women who are watched by a nude man.[3] The nude male was modeled by Valadon's lover, André Utter.[4] They met through her son, Maurice Utrillo, and Utter modeled nude for several of Valadon's paintings, including Adam and Eve (1909) and Casting the Net (1914).[4]
Joy of Life is based on the theme of "women as nature," a typical subject at the time.[1] Gill Perry has argued that the painting reworks the theme of bathers in nature.[3] She notes that the women "seem strangely separate from each other, the male viewer and from the nature that surrounds them," which suggests a "more ambiguous, dislocated relationship with both nature and the male spectator."[3] Perry's reading is echoed by Patricia Mathews, who has described the figures as being in nature, but not equivalent to nature.[1] She suggests that the male viewer "has no other role in the painting except as this near-caricature of the dominating male gaze," as the women are unaware of being watched.[5] Rosemary Betterton has argued that the figures disrupt the male gaze and are, in fact, being caught in a moment without being sexualized.[1] According to Mathews, the painting does not offer the "coherent narrative that so clearly dominated masculinist images."[5] Valadon's Joy of Life, Mathews has noted, is consistent with the ways in which "various narratives intersect in her work in often uncomfortable ways to dislodge and destabilize conventional gendered interpretations."[5] In Casting the Net, completed three years later, Valadon actually reversed the traditional active male/passive female concept by casting the nude male in the role of object.[6]
References
- Mathews, Patricia (1991). "Returning the Gaze: Diverse Representations of the Nude in the Art of Suzanne Valadon". Art Bulletin. 73 (3): 415. doi:10.2307/3045814. JSTOR 3045814.
- "Joy of Life". Metropolitan Museum of Art.
- Perry, Gill (2001). "Valadon, Suzanne". In Gaze, Delia (ed.). Concise Dictionary of Women Artists. New York: Routledge. p. 669. ISBN 9781136599019.
- Faxon, Alicia Craig (2001). "Utter, Andre". In Jiminez, Jill Berk (ed.). Dictionary of Artist's Models. London: Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers. pp. 529–531. ISBN 9781135959210.
- Mathews, Patricia Townley (1999). Passionate Discontent: Creativity, Gender, and French Symbolist Art. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. pp. 199–202. ISBN 9780226510187.
- Diamand-Rosinsky, Thérèse (1996). "Les multiples de Suzanne Valadon: Marie-Clémentine, «Biqui», ou «Terrible Maria»?". In Marchesseau, Daniel (ed.). Suzanne Valadon. Martigny, Switzerland: Fondation Pierre Gianadda. p. 47.