Painting Her Pleasure

Three Women Artists and the Nude in Avant-Garde Paris

Lauren Jimerson

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Paperback

Forthcoming
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English

Manchester University Press
01 July 2025

Art & design styles: Impressionism & Post-Impressionism; Nudes depicted in art

This book examines nudes by three women: Suzanne Valadon, milie Charmy and Marie Vassilieff.

Working in avant-garde Paris, these artists pioneered modern body imagery, expressing female subjectivity and sexuality in paint. They experimented with the male nude, Black female nude, pregnant nude and nude self-portrait, a genre which few artists tackled until half a century later. Flouting the period's scientific discourses and social mores, they breached assumptions about 'feminine' art and unhinged expectations about the type of subject a woman could paint. They simultaneously defied prevailing academic and vanguard practices, forging new artistic methods for the representation of the body informed by an acute awareness of self.

Contextualising their work within and against modernism, drawing parallels with later feminist artists and philosophers, this interdisciplinary book unravels the complexities of early twentieth-century gender regimes and persistent cultural stereotypes, providing an illuminating history of women, sexuality and the body.

By: Lauren Jimerson
Imprint: Manchester University Press
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 240mm, Width: 170mm, Spine: 21mm
Weight: 787g
ISBN: 9781526184962
ISBN 10: 1526184966
Pages: 248
Publication Date: 01 July 2025
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

Lauren Jimerson is an independent art historian based in Paris.

Reviews for Painting Her Pleasure: Three Women Artists and the Nude in Avant-Garde Paris

'Cleanly dismantles one of the enduring myths of twentieth-century modernism: that ground zero in advancing the avant-garde was the female nude — as painted in Paris by two men.' Bridget Quinn, Hyperallergic 'Painting Her Pleasure is a rare treat... the book as a whole adds considerably to current thinking on representations of female pleasure.' - French Studies Journal -- .