Corps à lire, textes à vendre: l’atelier d’artiste dans la fiction (1867–1919), entre voyeurisme et prostitution

In the last third of the nineteenth century, the French-­language “roman de l’artiste” seems to have undergone a sexual redefinition. From 1867 onwards, as Manette Salomon shows, the Romantic focus on the artist’s struggle to create the ideal masterpiece shifted to the representation of the materiality of his desire. Through the prism of Naturalism, “l’atelier d’artiste” became a commonplace for illustrating the sex life of the Man of Genius, of which models were a part. As objects of voyeurism, they crystallized both his and the readers’ quasi-­medical obsession with the female body. The prostitution circuit in which most of the women—­and even some men—­posing for the “artist-­client” were involved reflected a reality, and allegorized the ever-­growing publishing market. Despite the objectifying message they conveyed, these representations in turn allowed models and sex-­workers to put in writing their own experience of studio work, as Neel Doff’s autobiographical novel Keetje (1919) testifies. (In French)