Bathers, Bodies, Beauty: The Visceral Eye

Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2006. Hardcover. VG/VG (light foxing to upper block, pages are otherwise very clean and crisp). Half blue, half tan boards with blue lettering on spine, blue dust jacket with color illustration on front cover, 342 pp, richly illustrated in color. "What meets the eye in Renoir's paintings of nude bathers? To some viewers, they are the very picture of female sensuality and beauty. To others, they embody a whole tradition of masculine mastery and feminine display. Yet others find in these naked women a fantasy of bodily liberation. The points of view are many, various, and occasionally startling. Linda Nochlin's aim in looking at works of art is not to construct a unitary response but to pull things apart, to leave the reader unsettled, confronting the contradictions - about the body, beauty, and ways of viewing - in the work of impressionists, modern masters, contemporary realists, and postmodernists."--Jacket. Contents include: Renoir's Great bathers : bathing as practice, bathing as representation -- Manet's Le bain : the Déjeuner and the death of the heroic landscape -- The man in the bathtub : Picasso's Le meutre and the gender of bathing -- Monet's Hôtel des roches noires : anxiety and perspective at the seashore -- Real beauty : the body in realism -- More beautiful than a beautiful thing : the body, old age, ruin, and death. Also includes bibliographical references and index.