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" Iconographies of Faith and Doubt in the Painting of Maurice Denis, the Nabis and their Contemporaries "
Hoeger, Laura Kathleen
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Latin Dissertation
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| Language of Document
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English
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| Record Number
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905654
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TL3ct06276
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| Main Entry
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Hoeger, Laura Kathleen
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| Title & Author
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Iconographies of Faith and Doubt in the Painting of Maurice Denis, the Nabis and their Contemporaries\ Hoeger, Laura Kathleen
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| College
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UC San Diego
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| Date
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2013
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2013
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| Abstract
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Iconographies of Faith and Doubt in the Painting of Maurice Denis, the Nabis and their Contemporaries identifies, describes and examines visual representations of spirituality by a loose group of French artists including Paul Gauguin, Maurice Denis and Paul Serusier working between the later 1880s and the first years of the twentieth century. It interrogates issues of doubt, faith and modernity as France moved toward secularization in the late nineteenth century. Each chapter analyzes paintings that engage with Christian imagery, ranging from the Christological symbology of the Crucifixion and the prefiguring narratives of the Old Testament to the modern iconography of Joan of Arc and the belief systems of French Spiritisme. The work of the ardent Catholic, Maurice Denis and his contemporaries, is central to my inquiry. I argue that they arrive at a somewhat uniform style for depicting religious subject matter, despite their varied relationships to institutional Christianity. I situate the work of well-known and historicized artists such as Gauguin alongside lesser-known members of the late nineteenth century avant-garde by revealing their shared address not only to the forms and meanings of modern spirituality but to a wider culture in which the very notion of public and state-sanctioned religion -as well as the nature and effects of private devotion--were in dispute. I argue that the concept of "Frenchness" that had been tied to the Catholic faith for centuries complicated issues of citizenship and identity throughout the nation. Each chapter navigates a different cultural geography beginning in chapter 1 with rural Brittany, the site of one of the last vestiges of publically performed, community-based Catholicism. I examine competing architectural campaigns in the nation's capital that gave rise to the Eiffel Tower and the Sacre Coeur Basilica (chapter 2); and the antithetical representations of Joan of Arc as secularists in the Third Republic sought to claim her as a soldier for France rather than as a spiritual warrior for the Catholic Church (chapter 3). The final chapter presents a comparative study of French Spiritualist visual art bringing the paintings of Denis alongside those of James Tissot, demonstrating that the visual culture of new and unorthodox spiritualities was, in fact, founded on the iconographical traditions of Catholicism
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UC San Diego
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