Watteau and the Cultural Politics of Eighteenth-Century France

Plax engages in an interdisciplinary examination of several categories of Watteau’s paintings - theatrical, military, fêtes, and the art dealer. Arguing that Watteau consistently applied coherent strategies of representation aimed at subverting high art, she shows how his paintings toyed ironically with conventions and genres and confounded traditional categories. Plax connects these strategies to broader cultural themes and political issues that Watteau’s art addressed throughout his career, thereby revealing the substantial unity of his oeuvre. Using a wide array of visual and verbal primary resources to illuminate the richness of the visual culture of eighteenth-century Paris and the last years of Louis XIV’s reign, Watteau and the Cultural Politics of Eighteenth-Century France contributes substantially to the current reassessment of the period.

• Watteau’s work contains a critical social and political commentary • Examines little-studied works, as well as those that have sustained attention • Draws upon a wide range of visual and verbal primary sources

Introduction; 1.Watteau’s Departure of the Italian Comedians in 1697 and the battle of the theater; 2. Watteau’s military paintings: conflicts and confluences; 3. The Fête Galante and the cult of Honnêteté; 4. The meeting of high and low culture in Watteau’s Gersaint’s Signboard.