Mystic Masque

In the fifty years since Georges Rouault's death, his paintings have fallen from the heights of popularity in the 1940s and 50s to the depths of neglect in recent years. The publication of "Mystic Masque", which accompanies an exhibition of the same name at Boston College's McMullen Museum of Art, will introduce a new generation to the work of a modern master. This catalogue features lavish illustrations of the outward "masks" that Rouault employed – those of circus players, prostitutes, judicial figures, and even the face of Christ.


Rouault's work, as presented here, depicts the human condition as a kind of pageant or guise where outward appearances – from those of the wealthiest public officials to the lowliest slum-dwellers – misrepresent and betray deeper realities. Essays by scholars of art history, history, theology, and other fields lend an interdisciplinary context to the striking images, recovering Rouault's rightful place in modern painting.


Contents:

Preface

Nancy Netzer



Introduction: Voltaire and Veronica, Symbolist-Realist Judgment

Stephen Schloesser





Part I: 1871-1901



1871-1901: Realis, Symbolism, Mystic Modernism

Stephen Schloesser



The Refuge of Art: Fustave Moreau and the Legacy of Symbolism

Jeffery Howe



Erasing Time and Place: Rouault and "Medieval" Art

Virginia Reinburg





Part II: 1902-1920



1902-1920: The Hard Metier of Unmasking

Stephen Schloesser



Georges Rouault: Action Painter

Jean-Marie Teze, S. J.



Rouault and the Dynaimcs of Self-Deception

Margaret R. Miles



Tears at the Heart of Spectacular Paris: Rouault's Prostitutes

Mary Louise Roberts



1908/2008: Rouault's Whore, Freud's Gender-bent Judge, and Unmasking as Infinite Regression

Paul Breines





Part III: 1921-1929



1921-1929: Jazz Age Graphic Shock

Stephen Schloesser



Notes on the Miserere plates exhibited in Mystic Masque

Stephen Schloesser



"Spleen and Ideal in Strife": Rouault's Baudelaire, 1918-1927

Soo Yun Kang



The Aesthetics of Shock: Baudelaire, Benjamin, Rouault

Susan A. Michaelczyk



Rouault's Dying Slave: Being Human as an Unfinished Work

Naomi Blumberg



Rouault and Expressionism

Claude Cernuschi



Pere Ubu: Archetype of Social Dysfunction

John J. Michalczyk



The Mystery of Rouault's Reincarnations: A Sixteen-Year Obsession

Marie Garraut



The Colonial Scourge: Pere Ubu from teh Brazza Mission to the Paris Exposition Coloniale

JOdy Blake


Technique and Space in the Miserere

John McCoy





Part IV: 1929-1939



1929-1939: Mystic Masque, Hieratic Harmony

Stephen Schloesser



Hieratic Grandeur: Weightless World, Hidden Order, Magnifying the Modest, 1930-1943

Gael Mooney and Stephen Schloesser



In Deed and in Need: the Friendship in Art of Georges Rouault and Andre Suares

Thomas Epstein




Andre Suares, Passion (excerpts)

Translated by Thomas Epstein





Part V: 1940-1958



1939-1958: Perpetual Peregrinus: Toute vue des choses qui n'est pas etrange est fausse

Stephen Schloesser



French Resistance: Rouault's Partisan History of hte Modern

Tara Ward



The Mask of Villon: Neo-Medievalist Realism in Rouault's Divertissement

Anne A. Davenport



"Pilgrim of art": Artistic Autoomy and Christian Commitment in Rouault's Late Work

Stephen Dahme



Lacrymae rerum: Creative Intution of the Transapparent Reality

Bernard Doering



Creating Rouault's Legacy, 1945-1965: Commander in the Legion d'honneur, Artist of Catholic Modernity

Sheila Nowinski



Rouault's Faces of Christ: Notes for a Pictorial Contemplation

Nora Possenti Ghiglia



Rouault in New York: Art and Reputation in the Mid-Century United States

David Quigley





Part VI: Unfinished Works



1963: Les inacheves: The Donation of Mme Rouault and her Children

Stephen Schloesser



Et Veronique au tendre lin passe encore sur le chemin...

James F. Keenan, S. J.



Rouault's Christ: A Call to Aesthetic Conversion

Roberto S. Goizueta