On February 7, 2022 at Noon ET, American Friends of Musée de Montmartre will host a salon to examine Montmartre artist and model, Suzanne Valadon. The guest speaker will be Dr. Corrinne Chong. To register and receive the Zoom link, send an email to fondation@museedemontmartre.fr.
SUZANNE VALADON SALON: “un esprit libre”
Suzanne Valadon’s vigorous assertion of line, visceral embrace of color, and unflinching faithfulness to naturalism defined her gender-defying style – one which subverted expectations of la femme peintre. In the critical reception, writers often ascribed the pictorial strengths in her art to masculine attributes and dismissed the truth of her vision as “vulgar.”
Through the themes of “virilité” and “verité” (recurring terms in the discourse), this talk focuses on the ways in which Valadon disrupted conventions of l’art féminin. Topics will also consider the psychological realism of her portraits, the experience of embodiment in her nudes, and her distancing from feminist artist groups to uphold her status as “un esprit indépendant.”
BIOGRAPHY OF DR. CORRINE CHONG
Corrinne Chong holds a PhD in Art History from the University of Edinburgh. From 2017 to 2019, she was a key member of the curatorial team for the Early Rubens exhibition at the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto. Most recently, she was a research consultant for Suzanne Valadon: Model, Painter, Rebel at the Barnes Foundation.
She is currently developing an exhibition project on the intersections between art history and opera scenography. Her upcoming publication explores the dialogue between art, music, and mysticism at the fin-de-siècle.