Venus Birth (Bouguereau)

Analyzes

Style

The principal subject is mythological Venus, in its form Anadyomène (outgoing of sea foam); it is in full form: crowned luxuriant braids, it appears thus with the world surrounded by its Zealoies.

Subjects and symbols

The Centaure S evoke brutality Viril E; they are the partners of the nymph S. the embraces illustrate the coupling, the women being pressed métaphoriquement on the men. The Dauphin S and the Ondin S indicate that Venus is girl of the sea. A myriad of Cherub S, among which volète Cupid with the arrows causing the Passion, also associates the goddess with the sky, called Ouranos in the mythography. Small the loves evoke Cupid, wire and accessory to the goddess of the Love. All the glances converge towards the principal subject.

The clearer skin color of the women and the children associates them, underlining their difference vis-a-vis the bronzed male centaurs. The whiteness of dye was a female virtue appraisal with the Western Moyen-âge.

The shell is the symbol of this glorious girl of the sky and the sea, who rinses her long hair once left water. The Conque S announce in brass band the arrival of the goddess on the scene of the Greek world.

Judgments

Joris-Karl Huysmans

It is necessary for me well, alas! To start with the work of Mr. Bouguereau. Mr. Gérôme had already renovated the icy ivory of Wilhem Miéris, Mr. Bouguereau made worse. In.liaison.with Mr. Cabanel, he invented gas painting, the puffed up part. It is not even any more porcelain, it the is licked flask one; it is I do not know what, something like soft flesh of Poulpe. The Venus birth, spread out over the ogee moulding of a room, is a poverty which does not have a name. The composition is that of everyone. A nude woman on a shell, in the center. All around other women playing about in known installations. The heads are banal, it are these sydonies which one sees turning in the front of the hairdressers; but what is more still afflicting, they are the busts and the legs. Take Venus of the head to the feet, it is a badly inflated goldbeater's skin. Neither muscles, neither nerves, nor blood. The knees godent, miss fasteners; it is by a miracle of balance that this unhappy holds upright. A blow of pin in this chest and the whole would fall. The color is cheap, and cheap is the drawing. It is carried out as for chromos of dragee boxes; the hand went only, making the undulation of the body automatically. It is to be howled of rage when one thinks that this painter who, in the hierarchy of poor, is Master, is chief of school, and which this school, if guard there is not taken, will become quite simply the absolute negation of art!

“Living room of 1879” published in the Modern art .