Bad girl Bacchante She’s the follower of the Roman God Bacchus (Dionysus in Greek mythology): the God of grape harvesting, winemaking, fertility, ritual madness, and religious ecstasy. Ladies and gentleman, I’m proud to introduce Vigée Le Brun’s Bacchante. Le Brun was a female painter in 18th century France who was one of the few women to achieve success in the predominantly male centric field. Her style is soft, and sumptuous in a way that seems to surpass the materiality of paint itself and into the realm of reality. Executed in a style bonded through a marriage of Rococo color sensibilities and a likeness for the emerging Neoclassical style (1), Le Brun’s paintings intertwine an affinity for the airy, ethereal beauty of her preceding Rococo masters while keeping up with the contemporary artists paving new paths ahead of her. As a woman, generally as a person living in the 18th century, Vigée Le Brun was restricted to a limited range of subject matter she could paint without controversy. The practice of painting had been thoroughly standardized by the time Le Brun was being taught by her own portraitist father. If she wanted to keep her impressive stake in the art world, it was necessary Le Brun followed all of the rules. Especially as the portrait painter of Marie Antoinette, Le Brun was held to a greater responsibility, since the Queen’s image was essentially at the tip of Le Brun’s brush. Can you imagine walking through the Palace of Versailles? And not as a tourist, but as a twenty-four old invited by the Queen? Le Brun hit an unfortunate bump in 1783 with her submission of Marie Antoinette in a Chemise Dress to the Académie royale de peinture de sculpture. The painting, which shows Antoinette in the 18th century equivalent of lingerie, was condemned for its “inappropriate portrayal of royalty”(2). Despite a decent amount of admiration for the portrait, Le Brun was forced to remove it from the exhibition and repaint a dress suitable by the standards of the Académie. No way would Le Brun be able to get away with exploring eroticism in the Queen’s portraits, but Bacchante on the other hand, she was the perfect fit. It was only two years later that Le Brun made this Bacchante, and in the interim, produced a number of other paintings of the subject. In addition to Marie Antoinette, she spent a great deal of time painting Emma Hart who, according to the artist’s diary, Le Brun found to be “vulgar” and “exceedingly mocking and denigrating, to the point that her faults were her only means of conversation” (3). Although this might sounds more like an eloquent insult, Le Brun was nonetheless captivated by Hart’s “attitude” and began associating the 18th century personality with Dionysus’s companion creature. Thus, Bacchante resembled something far beyond a fantasy or myth for Le Brun, but an opportunity to tap into the untamed spirit of contemporary figures she could associate with the “wild woman” (4). In the main Bacchante featured here from 1785, Le Brun’s subject is in the midst of a moment of leisure and relaxation. Maybe she’d just drunkenly froliced through the forest and needed a rest. What better way to relax than to recline on your best red silk and fantasize about the next escapade? Is it so far as to say Le Brun was possibly painting a kind of her own fantasy? I can only imagine the kind of world she was living and working in, a world where artistic freedoms were numbered, particularly for female artists, and thus extremely valuable. There’s a sense of otherness created by Bacchante’s gaze, as if she’s taking notice of an animal beyond the viewer or lost forever in a pleasant daydream. If this painting came to life, I imagine Bacchante meeting her eyes to ours and saying something along the lines of, ”Ah, this is the life! Now pour me another glass, please.” If anything, Le Brun’s continuous representation of Bacchante speaks to her admiration of the subject’s many playful elements and the various directions she could take them in. The seemingly casual pose Le Brun sets Bacchante in is split somewhere between restful and sexual. With right arm raised and bent across her head, we are given nearly a full frontal view excluding her lower extremities, which are covered by the leopard skin (one of her key accessories) draped lazily over her lap. Thus, in such a position it seems fair to think that Le Brun’s Bacchante was giving her audience an intentionally erotic view, in other words, the lady knew what she was doing (and acting all coy). Not only does this grant the viewer a sense of permission to shamelessly stare at her body, but it also stands as a testament to the strength and power of the female body as something to be marveled. The mythological party girl can be likened to current and past depictions of popular celebrities. Walk down the aisle of a nearby convenience store and count how many magazine covers feature a famous female minimally dressed and/or using her hands (or some contorted posture) to cover her genitals or breasts. But in this point, I want to emphasize the body as a tool for one to use versus the body being used like a tool. It’s important to distinguish these into opposite categories since the latter scenario could potentially suggest a degree of coercion. But when we talk about the body as a tool of power and strength, we can look to our reclining Bacchante and compare her alongside, let’s say for instance, 1950’s pin-up girl Betty Brosmer (5). No we’re dealing with a representation of empowerment in the feminine flesh. Le Brun wasn’t the only artist who found a muse in Bacchantes. Fellow Parisian René Lalique, who was a glass designer in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, also used Bacchantes as a motif around his most famous piece the Lalique “Bacchantes” Vase (1927). Lalique was highly esteemed as one of the leaders of the Art Nouveau and Art Deco movement (6). His recreation of the mythological subject isn’t depicted just once, but repeatedly around the cup in high relief. The vase has stayed in continuous production throughout the remainder of the twentieth and into today. Interestingly enough though, we might notice that the languid marble limbs of Lalique’s multiple Bacchantes share a sense of relaxation similar to Le Brun’s Bacchante. Throughout an array of media, Bacchante’s flirtatious nature and intoxicated ecstasy pulses through whatever art she inhabits. Le Brun used the techniques she learned as a classically trained painter, imbued with her preference for Rococo palettes and that wispy effect of artists like Watteau and Fragonard. As a both a woman and an 18th century French citizen, there were little avenues to escape the multitude of confines Le Brun lived within. Bacchante is more than just the mythological priestess to Bacchus. As Le Brun sees it, she’s the epitome of seduction, casually taking a break in the middle of a forest, and completely oblivious to the curious viewer. In this, she carries a strong aura of confidence and self-assuredness despite her lack of clothing, which is of little to no concern to her. Le Brun imbues her Bacchante with the utmost confidence and suave- if confidence really is key consider all the doors open to Bacchante. I'll officially conclude by sharing a poem that Madame Le Brun wrote regarding the bias she felt towards her and other women's works. This merely being because of the fact they were women, Le Brun composed a very beautiful piece just as magnificent as her canvases. (untitled) Who more than you has been so unjustly plagued? A manly brush adorns your paintings Thou art not praised for thy womanhood Yet their just envy Its unrelenting cries And the serpents unleashed against you, Proclaim better than our tongues, How great a man you are -Vigee Le Brun Footnotes (1) "Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun." Biography.com. A&E Networks Television, 02 Apr. 2014. Web. 6 May 2017. http://www.biography.com/people/elisabeth-vig%C3%A9e-le-brun-37280 (2) "Collection." The Metropolitan Museum of Art, I.e. The Met Museum. N.p., n.d. Web. 6 May 2017. http://www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/view?exhibitionId=%7B31a1bee1-137f-4d0d-bf0c-751b9354bb6c%7D&oid=656930 (3) "Artwork Details." Artwork Details, Liverpool Museums. N.p., n.d. Web. 6 May 2017. http://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/picture-of-month/displaypicture.aspx?id=119 (4) Mythography | Maenads (Bacchantes) in Myth and Art. N.p., n.d. Web. 6 May 2017. http://www.loggia.com/myth/maenad.html (5 Betty Brosmer the First Supermodel On over 300 Covers, With a Perfect Hourglass Figure. N.p., n.d. Web. 6 May 2017 http://www.bettybrosmer.com/ (6) "MUSEE LALIQUE." Musée Lalique. N.p., n.d. Web. 6 May 2017. http://www.musee-lalique.com/vase-bacchantes
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