Mystic Masque
Semblance and Reality in Georges Rouault, 1871-1958
In the fifty years since Georges Rouault's death, his paintings have fallen from the heights of popularity in the 1940s and 50s to the depths of neglect in recent years. The publication of "Mystic Masque", which accompanies an exhibition of the same name at Boston College's McMullen Museum of Art, will introduce a new generation to the work of a modern master. This catalogue features lavish illustrations of the outward "masks" that Rouault employed – those of circus players, prostitutes, judicial figures, and even the face of Christ.
Rouault's work, as presented here, depicts the human condition as a kind of pageant or guise where outward appearances – from those of the wealthiest public officials to the lowliest slum-dwellers – misrepresent and betray deeper realities. Essays by scholars of art history, history, theology, and other fields lend an interdisciplinary context to the striking images, recovering Rouault's rightful place in modern painting.
Contents:
Preface
Nancy Netzer
Introduction: Voltaire and Veronica, Symbolist-Realist Judgment
Stephen Schloesser
Part I: 1871-1901
1871-1901: Realis, Symbolism, Mystic Modernism
Stephen Schloesser
The Refuge of Art: Fustave Moreau and the Legacy of Symbolism
Jeffery Howe
Erasing Time and Place: Rouault and "Medieval" Art
Virginia Reinburg
Part II: 1902-1920
1902-1920: The Hard Metier of Unmasking
Stephen Schloesser
Georges Rouault: Action Painter
Jean-Marie Teze, S. J.
Rouault and the Dynaimcs of Self-Deception
Margaret R. Miles
Tears at the Heart of Spectacular Paris: Rouault's Prostitutes
Mary Louise Roberts
1908/2008: Rouault's Whore, Freud's Gender-bent Judge, and Unmasking as Infinite Regression
Paul Breines
Part III: 1921-1929
1921-1929: Jazz Age Graphic Shock
Stephen Schloesser
Notes on the Miserere plates exhibited in Mystic Masque
Stephen Schloesser
"Spleen and Ideal in Strife": Rouault's Baudelaire, 1918-1927
Soo Yun Kang
The Aesthetics of Shock: Baudelaire, Benjamin, Rouault
Susan A. Michaelczyk
Rouault's Dying Slave: Being Human as an Unfinished Work
Naomi Blumberg
Rouault and Expressionism
Claude Cernuschi
Pere Ubu: Archetype of Social Dysfunction
John J. Michalczyk
The Mystery of Rouault's Reincarnations: A Sixteen-Year Obsession
Marie Garraut
The Colonial Scourge: Pere Ubu from teh Brazza Mission to the Paris Exposition Coloniale
JOdy Blake
Technique and Space in the Miserere
John McCoy
Part IV: 1929-1939
1929-1939: Mystic Masque, Hieratic Harmony
Stephen Schloesser
Hieratic Grandeur: Weightless World, Hidden Order, Magnifying the Modest, 1930-1943
Gael Mooney and Stephen Schloesser
In Deed and in Need: the Friendship in Art of Georges Rouault and Andre Suares
Thomas Epstein
Andre Suares, Passion (excerpts)
Translated by Thomas Epstein
Part V: 1940-1958
1939-1958: Perpetual Peregrinus: Toute vue des choses qui n'est pas etrange est fausse
Stephen Schloesser
French Resistance: Rouault's Partisan History of hte Modern
Tara Ward
The Mask of Villon: Neo-Medievalist Realism in Rouault's Divertissement
Anne A. Davenport
"Pilgrim of art": Artistic Autoomy and Christian Commitment in Rouault's Late Work
Stephen Dahme
Lacrymae rerum: Creative Intution of the Transapparent Reality
Bernard Doering
Creating Rouault's Legacy, 1945-1965: Commander in the Legion d'honneur, Artist of Catholic Modernity
Sheila Nowinski
Rouault's Faces of Christ: Notes for a Pictorial Contemplation
Nora Possenti Ghiglia
Rouault in New York: Art and Reputation in the Mid-Century United States
David Quigley
Part VI: Unfinished Works
1963: Les inacheves: The Donation of Mme Rouault and her Children
Stephen Schloesser
Et Veronique au tendre lin passe encore sur le chemin...
James F. Keenan, S. J.
Rouault's Christ: A Call to Aesthetic Conversion
Roberto S. Goizueta
About the Author
Stephen Schloesser is an associate professor of history at Boston College. He is the author of "Jazz Age Catholicism: Mystic Modernism in Postwar Paris, 1919-1933".