Enfilade

From Manchester UP (and currently discounted dramatically at Amazon). . . .

Marika Takanishi Knowles, Pierrot and His World: Art, Theatricality, and the Marketplace in France, 1697–1945 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2024), 264 pages, ISBN: 9781526174093, £85 / $130.

Pierrot, a theatrical stock character known by his distinctive costume of loose white tunic and trousers, is a ubiquitous figure in French art and culture. This richly illustrated book offers an account of Pierrot’s recurrence in painting, printmaking, photography and film, tracing this distinctive type from the art of Antoine Watteau to the cinema of Occupied France. As a visual type, Pierrot thrives at the intersection of theatrical and marketplace practices. From Watteau’s Pierrot (c. 1720) and Édouard Manet’s The Old Musician (1862) to Nadar and Adrien Tournachon’s Pierrot the Photographer (1855) and the landmark film Children of Paradise (1945), Pierrot has given artists a medium through which to explore the marketplace as a form for both social life and creative practice. Simultaneously a human figure and a theatrical mask, Pierrot elicits artistic reflection on the representation of personality in the marketplace.

Marika Takanishi Knowles is a Senior Lecturer in Art History at the University of St Andrews.

c o n t e n t s

Introduction
1  Antoine Watteau and the fête marchande
2  Pierrot-co-co
3  New Paris, Old Pierrot (New Pierrot, Old Paris)
4  Nadar Charlatan
5  Old Clothes and the Dreams of the Artist
Conclusion

Index