Heroic Indolence: Realism and the Politics of Time in Raffaëlli's Absinthe Drinkers

• Autores: Marnin Young
• Localización: Art bulletin, ISSN 0004-3079, Vol. 90, Nº 2, 2008, págs. 235-259
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • First shown at the sixth Impressionist exhibition in 1881, Jean-François Raffaëlli’s Absinthe Drinkers represents a location, an activity, and a social type—the banlieue, drinking, and the déclassé—which, when mixed together, offered a volatile cocktail to its original audience. A detailed historical examination of the social signification of these subjects demonstrates that the core meaning of the work resides in its representation of time. Recuperating a durational pictorial temporality from midcentury Realism, the painting managed to suggest, for certain viewers, a critical alternative to Impressionism and to the intensifying restructuring of the cultural experience of time under modernity.