Challenging clicheacute;s of Japanism as a feminine taste; Bachelor Japanists argues that Japanese aesthetics were central to contests over the meanings of masculinity in the West. Christopher Reed draws attention to the queerness of Japanist communities of writers; collectors; curators; and artists in the tumultuous century between the 1860s and the 1960s.Reed combines extensive archival research; analysis of art; architecture; and literature; the insights of queer theory; and an appreciation of irony to explore the East-West encounter through three revealing artistic milieus: the Goncourt brothers and other japonistes of late-nineteenth-century Paris; collectors and curators in turn-of-the-century Boston; and the mid-twentieth-century circles of artists associated with Seattlersquo;s Mark Tobey. The result is a groundbreaking integration of well-known and forgotten episodes and personalities that illuminates how Japanese aesthetics were used to challenge Western gender conventions. These disruptive effects are sustained in Reedrsquo;s analysis; which undermines conventional scholarly investments in the heroism of avant-garde accomplishment and ideals of cultural authenticity.
#910900 in eBooks 2017-06-23 2017-06-23File Name: B01M1972OG
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