Author Description

"John Sloan (1871-1951), a member of the revolutionary group of realist painters called "The Eight," was best known for his images of early twentieth-century New York City, pictures that have endured to this day as vital documents in American art history. Using psychoanalysis (object relations theory) and social history, Janice Coco looks beyond the optimistic surface of Sloan's images and explores the various identities that inform his many representations of women, from his early genre scenes of the 1910s through the nudes that shape the last half of his career." "Challenging the cornerstone assumption of Sloan as a neutral spectator, Coco suggests the ways that he used art to define himself as both man and artist, at a time when the ideals of masculinity and artistic identity were at issue. Examining his self-admitted fear of women, she demonstrates how Sloan's perception of them, as potentially threatening to his manhood and his career, manifests itself subtextually in the fetishized nature of his windowed compositions." "Coco attempts to unravel the web of misunderstanding that has shrouded Sloan's late nude studies, a large body of self-conscious yet insightful images that has thus far defied explanation. These figures are problematic, partly because of their exaggerated foreshortening and the slashing hatch marks that cover the bodies. They veer from modernist, formal preoccupations in that they waver between reality and idealization, never fully committing to either mode of representation. Bypassing the question of aesthetic quality that has troubled other art historians, the author correlates these pictures to Sloan's personal life and his early career. She theorizes that their unsettling appearance is symptomatic of the purpose they served in Sloan's quest for self-definition. Sixty-five illustrations accompany the text, three of which are in color."--BOOK JACKET.