Art Of Elegant: The Fallen Women of Felicien Rops

I am always perplexed when I hear people say that the Victorian period was a time of prudishness or priggery, because really, there was a proliferation of "sexual perversity" in the literature and art of the 1800's. If you doubt this, a great introduction to the Victorian's obsession with sex is Michel Foucault's informative book, "History of Sexuality." A rather curious example of this sex-obsession can be seen in the art work of Belgian artist Felicien Rops, whose images of women both terrify and intrigue me. Rops was greatly influenced by the writing and ideas of Charles Baudelaire, and he was obviously a man who had experienced the seedier side of life and became possessed by its allure as well as its pitfalls. Rops was a painter of fallen women, evil women, seductive women, deadly women...

I don't know why I haven't discussed Rops sooner, because his drawing above ["The Absinthe Drinker, 1865] is one of my favorite all-time images. The girl in the picture is just mesmerizing -- somehow, despite the fact that she is obviously intended to look pale and ill from her addiction [and undoubtedly she is a prostitute], she is also completely alluring and seductive. It is also no accident, I think, that she looks vaguely vampiric.

According to Mario Praz, "[Rops] object...was to portray Evil incarnate in woman -- a portrayal which Rops intended to be satirical, but which, owing to his excessive complaisance with the subject, he could not raise above the level of mere illustration, often pornographic."

I'm not certain how satirical Rops intended his images to be [or if he was just simply a misogynist], but it is interesting that Praz claims that Rops was somehow not able to raise his art work to a higher level because he was "complaisant" about the depiction of women...

Ironically, MANY paintings and illustrations during the 1800's represented women as sexual, dangerous, and seductive. I see Rops as someone who was trying to peel away the layer of falsity and academic seriousness in the art world, and take these ideas to their obvious and extreme end. His images are almost always borderline [if not all-out] pornographic. He challenged the viewer to be seduced by the eroticism of his images, while also being revolted by them...

Despite the fact that he does not portray women in a positive light, he manages to raise interesting questions about the representations of women also present in more popular art works of the time -- particularly those by the Pre-Raphaelites. I love the Pre-Raphaelites, don't get me wrong, but they were just as guilty as Rops of perpetuating images of women as beautiful, yet always perpetually immoral creatures.

Rops' no-nonsense approach is what draws me to him. His images are not traditionally beautiful and his women are not worthy of emulation -- they are naughty and debased. But they also tell us a lot about the ways that women have been perceived in culture and remind us of the importance of having a critical eye about art, even when the aesthetic is so mesmerizing that it makes us momentarily forget...