Berthe Morisot's Subversive Objectification of Women

Abstract

As was evident in "Berthe Morisot, Woman Impressionist," an international touring exhibition of the artist's work in 2018-2019, Morisot's painting often captures ways in which the libidinal and affective politics of vision shape the objectified construction of the viewed female subject, and it subtly examines how those politics can be negotiated and challenged. Her portraits of bourgeois Parisian women and figure painting in the late 1860s and 1870s are especially compelling in their interrogation of painting feminine objectification and are a crucial part of Morisot's contribution to the culture of Modernity. I offer a new interpretive framework for identifying a relationship among four well-known paintings of women in domestic spaces that all play with the concept of objectification to engage viewers in the work of essentialist deconstruction. I argue that these paintings build on two innovative and ultimately interrelated forms of defamiliarization to subvert typical viewing practices that essentialize the emotionalized minds and sexualized bodies of women.