Style/Ecriture. On the classical ethos, women’s sculptural practice and pre‐First‐World‐War feminism

Abstract

Appropriating the dichotomy Roland Barthes introduced between style and écriture to sculptural studies, my article reassesses the position of women sculptors in post‐Rodin modernity. In contrast to received analyses, I use the archives to offer an account of sculptural practice and the classical ethos in terms of pre‐First World War feminism. My article addresses an issue in methodology and the need to re‐examine the relation between aesthetics and politics. I analyse the ethos of the craftsmanship of style as it sustained the practice of French sculptor Jane Poupelet and informed the writing of her female audience. Comparing Poupelet’s sculptural technique to modes of writing deployed in the same period by Gide and Proust, I argue that what deeply concerned Poupelet and her female audience falls under Barthes’s concept of écriture. This involved an act of historical solidarity: the choice of the ethos through which the social function and destination of artistic practice became manifest.