Artibus et Historiae no. 13 (VII)

1986, ISSN 0391-9064

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JOYCE BRODSKY - Delacroix's Le Lever, Cézanne's Interior with Nude, Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, and the Genre of the Erotic Nude

This article investigates an example of the practice of three artists, Delacroix in Le Lever (Collection Maxime Citroen, Paris), Cézanne in Interior with Nude (Barnes Foundation, Merion Penn.), and Picasso in Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (Museum of Modern Art, New York), for purpose of exploring a theory of genres built upon artists' use of other artists' work. Such a theory would engender a model of style in which style would emerge as genre, that is the pattern of sequence of constancy and change of a motif grounded in the social nexus the motivates the particular blend. It presents a view of the artist as a conservator, rather than a radical innovator, whose ability to vary inherited motifs preserves what is constitutive of a culture.