{"product_id":"the-spectacular-body-science-method-and-meaning-in-the-work-of-degas","title":"The Spectacular Body: Science  Method  and Meaning in the Work of Degas","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe Spectacular Body explores the ways in which the human bodyespecially the female bodywas visualized by artists in late nineteenth-century Paris. Focusing on the work of Degas  it deals with issues of sexuality  gender  and visual representation to illuminate the underlying meanings of the famed Impressionists depictions of women in his series of bathers  dancers  and prostitutes.  Engaging in feminist polemic  Anthea Callen investigates why at this particular time the female figure became such a highly charged icon for masculine projections of fascination with and revulsion over the body. She explains how the gender politics of Degas culture made it inevitable that he represent masculine desireand anxieties about masculine identity evoked by such desirethrough an apparently detached masculine scrutiny of the female body. Callen shows how Degas pictorial stance was structurally unresolved  caught between a controlling  distanced  quasi-scientific observation on the one hand  and a disruptive and more unmediated  more psychically loaded engagement with the body on the other. Locating Degas art within his own historical era  she discusses how socio-scientific ideas of health and disease  hygiene and dirt  prostitution  criminality  sexuality  class  race  and other issues were played out in his work. Using visual analysis as a deconstructive tool  she discusses Degas choice of medium  composition  spatial organization  pose  color  and light and shade  showing that his technical unorthodoxy combined with scientific discourse in his art to make his work a paradigm of artistic and urban modernity.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"My Store","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44987116093493,"sku":"ByrdShop_0300054432","price":69.59,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0627\/8139\/0901\/files\/9780300054439.jpg?v=1770925303","url":"https:\/\/atxbooks.com\/products\/the-spectacular-body-science-method-and-meaning-in-the-work-of-degas","provider":"ATX Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}