Anxious (Dis)Figuration: Ingres in Whistler's Little Blue Girl

Abstract

This article examines J.M. Whistler's Harmony in Blue and Gold: The Little Blue Girl, situating it as a central site of the artist's anxieties and desires. Begun in 1894 and only relinquished after Whistler's death in 1903, The Little Blue Girl is a strange painting, the body within it oddly disfigured and the idiomaticity fragmented and hesitant. This work represents an ambitious attempt on the part of the artist to inscribe himself into tradition through a specific quotational praxis. Whistler staked his bid for canonicity on The Little Blue Girl through a reference to the bodies of Ingres. The Little Blue Girl's palimpsestic surface betrays the desires motivating this referential strategy and the anxieties that prevent it from fulfilling its primary function. Monica Kjellman‐Chapin is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Art History in the Visual and Performing Arts Department at Clark University. She completed her PhD on Whistler's late paintings of the female nude at Boston University and is currently researching and writing about art history and kitsch.