Resumen de Body as "character" in early eighteenth-century French art and performance
This essay argues that the concentrated focus upon figural articulation in the drawings of Antoine Watteau invokes a pronounced appreciation in early eighteenth-century French culture for the construction of the body as spectacle. Referred to as “character” by dance theorists eager to promote the expressive possibilities of the body independent of narrative drama, corporeal spectacle extended across physical and graphic representational genres. While initial manifestations of “character” manipulated outward signs of status and identity, a newer trend—epitomized in Watteau's nuanced figures—honed such social play to probe the very workings of the body as spectacle. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.
