The Earthly Chimera and the Femme Fatale: Fear of Women in Nineteenth Century Art

20 May–21 June 1981

As women gained more and more political and social freedom in the 19th century, fear of their increased power spawned a new genre of literature and art. Images of woman as femme fatale and as chimera, that mythical beast who threatened men with evil and seductive powers, emerged in works by Edvard Munch, Aubrey Beardsley, and Paul Gauguin and in the writings of Stephane Mallarmé, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and Charles Baudelaire. The subjects of these pieces center on such Biblical and mythological figures as Salomé, Eve, Venus, and Judith. The exhibition explores this phenomenon through 45 paintings, drawings, prints, sculptures, and work in multi-media assembled here for the first time, which are on loan from public and private collections throughout the country. The exhibition was organized by Professor Reinhold Heller of the University of Chicago’s Department of Art as an outgrowth of his seminar on “femme fatale” imagery. A series of film screenings accompanied the exhibition in addition to an interdisciplinary symposium that included talks by Edward A. Maser, Smart Museum Director; Professor Heller; Françoise Meltzer, Professor in the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures; and George Pollock, Professor of Psychiatry at Northwestern University.

Curator: Professor Reinhold Heller, Department of Art, University of Chicago

Funding was provided in part by the Cochrane-Woods Exhibition Fund, the Harold T. Martin fund, and the Smart Family Foundation Fund in addition to a grant from the Illinois Arts Council. 

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