AHCS Speaker Series: Marni Kessler "Edgar Degas' Family Gaze: Re-reading Le Pédicure"
The Department of Art History and Communication Studies welcomes Marni Kessler, Associate Professor, University of Kansas, to speak at our annual lecture series (follow this link for a complete list of this year's speakers).
Title: "Edgar Degas' Family Gaze: Re-reading Le Pédicure"
Abstract: In Le Pédicure of 1872-73, Edgar Degas depicts his nine-year-old American niece Joe slumped impassively on a chintz banquette while her toe is examined by a balding chiropodist. Contradiction and ambiguity permeate this seemingly benign painting. Joe’s alarmingly unanimated body, combined with the bandage-like effect of the white cloth that lies across it, promotes a scene of ill health. But the chemise that winks from between the cloth and Joe’s cadaverously pale shin lends the picture an unexpected crackle. The lace bonnet to the girl’s right, which resembles a grown woman’s corset, alludes to undergarments, highlighting even more the unclothed body we do not see. Further driving the image into an unexpected realm of undress, the child’s discarded dress lifelessly lies across the top of the banquette. To be sure, Degas forces us to think about Joe’s undressed body, to consider its vulnerability, especially in relation to the clothed man who works on her toe. Misinterpreted by others as a representation of the luxurious lifestyles and healthy hygiene practices of the wealthy, Le Pédicure is anything but. Neither neatly unequivocal nor proper, this painting traffics in what is surprisingly disturbing. In my paper, I will explore the frictions that Degas parses between dress and undress, youth and age, unconsciousness and activity in order to begin to redress our understanding of this curious painting.
Biography: Professor Kessler specializes in nineteenth-century European art and visual culture, and is also interested in art historical theory and methodology, critical theory, fashion studies, and gender and visual representation. In her research, as in her teaching, she combines close visual analysis of objects with social/historical context and a variety of theoretical frameworks. She has published articles and book chapters on Manet, Degas, Caillebotte, Morisot, and Haussmann’s Paris. Kessler’s most recent publication, on the uncanny in Antoine Vollon’s Mound of Butter, represents her evolving interest in still life painting, food culture, materiality, and the psychoanalytic. Her book, Sheer Presence: The Veil in Manet’s Paris, published in December 2006 by the University of Minnesota Press, examines the visual/historical/cultural significance of the veil in late nineteenth-century French visual culture. Kessler is currently at work on her second book, tentatively titled “Edgar Degas’s Family Album,” that examines the visual construction of family, memory, and trauma in Edgar Degas’s New Orleans paintings.