Saints and lovers: myths of the avant-garde in Michel Georges-Michel's Les Montparnos
This article examines Michel Georges-Michel’s 1924 novel Les Montparnos as a study of the myths circulating around the Montparnasse avant-garde of the 1920s, and their function in relation to art. Key amongst these myths is the idea of art as a religion, according to which avant-garde artists are co...
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| Format: | Article |
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Sage
2012
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| Online Access: | https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/33900/ |
| _version_ | 1848794730810310656 |
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| author | Shingler, Katherine |
| author_facet | Shingler, Katherine |
| author_sort | Shingler, Katherine |
| building | Nottingham Research Data Repository |
| collection | Online Access |
| description | This article examines Michel Georges-Michel’s 1924 novel Les Montparnos as a study of the myths circulating around the Montparnasse avant-garde of the 1920s, and their function in relation to art. Key amongst these myths is the idea of art as a religion, according to which avant-garde artists are conceived as secular saints and martyrs. While this notion of artist as saint is strongly present in early-twentieth-century biographies of Van Gogh, Georges-Michel explicitly relates his fictionalized version of Modigliani’s life not to such recent models but rather to the Renaissance masters, and especially to Raphael, a link which is explained in terms of the post-war ‘retour à l’ordre’ in French artistic culture. The novel’s references to Raphael as archetypal painter-lover are also related to its construction of a myth of the artist as virile and sexually prolific, and to its identification of creative and sexual impulses. |
| first_indexed | 2025-11-14T19:20:51Z |
| format | Article |
| id | nottingham-33900 |
| institution | University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus |
| institution_category | Local University |
| last_indexed | 2025-11-14T19:20:51Z |
| publishDate | 2012 |
| publisher | Sage |
| recordtype | eprints |
| repository_type | Digital Repository |
| spelling | nottingham-339002020-05-04T16:32:05Z https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/33900/ Saints and lovers: myths of the avant-garde in Michel Georges-Michel's Les Montparnos Shingler, Katherine This article examines Michel Georges-Michel’s 1924 novel Les Montparnos as a study of the myths circulating around the Montparnasse avant-garde of the 1920s, and their function in relation to art. Key amongst these myths is the idea of art as a religion, according to which avant-garde artists are conceived as secular saints and martyrs. While this notion of artist as saint is strongly present in early-twentieth-century biographies of Van Gogh, Georges-Michel explicitly relates his fictionalized version of Modigliani’s life not to such recent models but rather to the Renaissance masters, and especially to Raphael, a link which is explained in terms of the post-war ‘retour à l’ordre’ in French artistic culture. The novel’s references to Raphael as archetypal painter-lover are also related to its construction of a myth of the artist as virile and sexually prolific, and to its identification of creative and sexual impulses. Sage 2012-02-01 Article PeerReviewed Shingler, Katherine (2012) Saints and lovers: myths of the avant-garde in Michel Georges-Michel's Les Montparnos. French Cultural Studies, 23 (1). pp. 17-29. ISSN 1740-2352 avant-garde Bohemia Michel Georges-Michel Amedeo Modigliani Montparnasse myth Raphael retour à l’ordre http://frc.sagepub.com/content/23/1/17 doi:10.1177/0957155811427631 doi:10.1177/0957155811427631 |
| spellingShingle | avant-garde Bohemia Michel Georges-Michel Amedeo Modigliani Montparnasse myth Raphael retour à l’ordre Shingler, Katherine Saints and lovers: myths of the avant-garde in Michel Georges-Michel's Les Montparnos |
| title | Saints and lovers: myths of the avant-garde in Michel Georges-Michel's Les Montparnos |
| title_full | Saints and lovers: myths of the avant-garde in Michel Georges-Michel's Les Montparnos |
| title_fullStr | Saints and lovers: myths of the avant-garde in Michel Georges-Michel's Les Montparnos |
| title_full_unstemmed | Saints and lovers: myths of the avant-garde in Michel Georges-Michel's Les Montparnos |
| title_short | Saints and lovers: myths of the avant-garde in Michel Georges-Michel's Les Montparnos |
| title_sort | saints and lovers: myths of the avant-garde in michel georges-michel's les montparnos |
| topic | avant-garde Bohemia Michel Georges-Michel Amedeo Modigliani Montparnasse myth Raphael retour à l’ordre |
| url | https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/33900/ https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/33900/ https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/33900/ |