"Engaging, sophisticated and witty, French-born artist James Joseph Tissot (1836-1902) painted for many years in London before returning to Paris in the 1880s. His works not only document contemporary fashion, manners and mores, but also the paradoxes and anxieties of his age. In this book, ten contributors approach Tissot and his art from a variety of theoretical positions and disciplines to arrive at fresh and often startling insights. Looking both at and beneath Tissot's seductive surfaces, the authors attempt to identify and decode the artist's subtexts - issues of gender, voyeurism, exhibitionism, fetishism, kitsch and spiritualism."--Jacket.