The Body in Pieces – Fragment as a Metaphor of Modernity

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.11606/issn.2178-0447.ars.2026.243985

Keywords:

Modernity, Body, Fragment

Abstract

Originally presented as a lecture and subsequently published as an illustrated book, marking its thirtieth anniversary in 2024, this text analyses images from different periods of Western history in which the fragment, through strategies of cropping, mutilation, fragmentation, and separation, expresses the experience of the loss of wholeness and of disintegration. Linda Nochlin examines how modernity has affected the depiction of the body and subjectivity, from the disintegration of the artistic tradition of Antiquity, through the modern processes of fragmentation, to the destabilisation of the concept of a unified subject and of unambiguous gender identities in the artistic languages of the 1970s and 1980s.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

Author Biographies

  • Leonardo Nones, University of São Paulo

    Leonardo Nones é doutor pelo Programa de Pós-Graduação em Artes Visuais da Escola de Comunicação e Artes da Universidade de São Paulo (PPGAV-ECA/USP), na área de História, Teoria e Crítica, onde também cursou mestrado, e bacharel em Filosofia pela mesma universidade (FFLCH/USP). Traduziu o ensaio “Mulheres, arte e poder”, de Linda Nochlin, que integrou o número 42 da revista Ars, especial Histórias da arte sem lugar.

  • Linda Nochlin

    Linda Nochlin formou-se pelo Vassar College, em 1951, e defendeu seu mestrado sobre literatura inglesa do século XVII na Universidade de Columbia, em 1952. Ingressou no doutorado em história da arte no Institute of Fine Arts da New York University com tese sobre a obra de Gustave Courbet. Traduzido para o português, o texto “Por que não existiram grandes artistas mulheres?”, publicado em 1971, é comumente considerado o marco da escrita feminista em história da arte. Nochlin também  lecionou em diversas universidades norte-americanas, como Vassar College, Columbia, Stanford, Williams, Hunter College e The City University of New York. Faleceu em 2017, aos 86 anos de idade.

References

APTER, Emily S. Feminizing the Fetish: Psychoanalysis and Narrative Obsession in Turnof-the-Century France. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991.

ATHANASSOGLOU-KALLMYER, Nina. Géricault's Severed Heads and Limbs: The Politics and Aesthetics of the Scaffold. The Art Bulletin, v. 74, n. 4, dez. 1992, p. 599-618.

ARASSE, Daniel. La Guillotine et l'imaginaire de la Terreur. Paris: Flammarion, 1987.

BATAILLE, Georges. Sacrificial Mutilation and the Severed Ear of Vincent Van Gogh. In: Visions of Excess: Selected Writings 1927-1939. Edição Allan Stoekl. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993, p. 61-72.

BAUDELAIRE, Charles. The Painter of Modern Life. In: The Painter of Modern Life and Other Essays. Tradução e edição Jonathan Mayne. Londres: Phaidon, 1964.

BAUDELAIRE, Charles. O pintor da vida moderna. Tradução Teresa Cruz. Lisboa: Nova Vega, 2009.

BERMAN, Marshall. All That Is Solid Melts Into Air: The Experience of Modernity. Nova York: Simon and Schuster, 1982.

BERMAN, Marshall. Tudo o que é sólido desmancha no ar - A aventura da modernidade. Tradução Carlos Felipe Moisés e Ana Maria L. Ioriatti. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 1986.

BIANCHI, Serge. La Revolution culturelle de l’an II. Paris: Aubier, 1982.

CRARY, Jonathan. Techniques of the Observer: On Vision and Modernity in the Nineteenth Century. Cambridge, Massachusetts e Londres: MIT Press, 1990.

CRARY, Jonathan. Técnicas do observador: visão e modernidade. Tradução Verrah Chamma. Rio de Janeiro: Editora Contraponto, 2012.

CROW, Thomas. Modernism and Mass Culture in the Visual Arts. In: Modernism and Modernity: The Vancouver Conference Papers. Edição Benjamin Buchloh et al. Halifax: Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, 1983, p. 215-64.

DEAN, Carolyn J. The Self and Its Pleasures: Bataille, Lacan, and the History of the Decentered Subject. Ithaca e Londres: Cornell University Press, 1992.

ELSEN, Albert E. The Partial Figure in Modern Sculpture: From Rodin to 1969. Baltimore: Baltimore Museum of Art, 1969-70.

ELSEN, Albert E. Notes on the Partial Figure. Artforum, n. 8, nov. 1969, p. 58-63.

FRISBY, David. Fragments of Modernity: Theories of Modernity in the Work of Simmel, Kracauer and Benjamin. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1985.

FURET, François. Penser la Revolution française. Paris: Gallimard, 1978.

HARRIS, Jean C. A Little Known Essay on Manet by Stephane Mallarme. The Art Bulletin, n. 46, dez. 1964.

HERTZ, Neil. Medusa's Head: Male Hysteria under Political Pressure. Representations, n. 4, out. 1983, p. 27-54.

HUNT, Lynn. Politics, Culture, and Class in the French Revolution. Berkeley e Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1984.

KENNEDY, Emmet. A Cultural History of the French Revolution. New Haven e Londres: Yale University Press, 1989.

KRAUSS, Rosalind E. Cindy Sherman, 1975-1993. Nova York e Londres: Rizzoli, 1993.

KRAUSS, Rosalind E; LIVINGSTON, Jane. L'Amour fou: Photography & Surrealism. Washington e Nova York: Corcoran Gallery of Art e Abbeville Press, 1985.

LAJER-BURCHARTH, Ewa. Warsaw Diary. Art in America, v. 82, fev. 1994, p. 84-93.

MEIER-GRAEFE, Julius. Edouard Manet. Munique: R. Piper & Co., 1912.

NOCHLIN, Linda. The Body in Pieces - The Fragment as a Metaphor of Modernity. Londres: Thames & Hudson, 1994.

NOCHLIN, Linda. Manet's Masked Ball at the Opera. In: The Politics of Vision: Essays on Nineteenth Century Art and Society. Nova York: Harper & Row, 1989; Londres: Thames and Hudson, 1991.

NOCHLIN, Linda. Realism. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1971.

OZOUF, Mona. La Fête Révolutionnaire, 1789-1799. Paris: Gallimard, 1976.

PINGEOT, Anne. Le Corps en morceaux. Paris: Musee d'Orsay, 1990.

POMMIER, Edouard. Aux Armes & Aux Arts! Les Arts de la Revolution 1789-1799. Paris: Editions Adam Biro, 1988.

REFF, Theodore. Manet’s ‘Portrait of Zola.’ The Burlington Magazine, v. 117, n. 862, jan. 1975, p. 34-44.

REFF, Theodore. The Chronology of Degas's Notebooks. The Burlington Magazine, v. 107, n. 753, dez. 1965, p. 606, 609-616.

RUDINESCO, Elisabeth. Dicionário de psicanálise. Tradução Vera Ribeiro e Lucy Magalhães. Rio de Janeiro: Zahar, 1998.

SCHAMA, Simon. Citizens. Nova York e Londres: Alfred A. Knopf e Viking, 1989.

SCHAPIRO, Meyer. Cézanne. Nova York: Harry N. Abrams, 1952.

SCHIFF, Gert. Johann Heinrich Füseli (1741-1825) Vol. I. Munich: Prestel-Verlag, 1973.

SHKLOVSKY, Viktor. Knight's Move. Tradução Richard Sheldon. Londres: Dalkey Archive Press, 2005.

SOLOMON-GODEAU, Abigail. The Legs of the Countess. October, v. 39, 1986, p. 65-108.

Downloads

Published

2026-08-11

Issue

Vol. 24 (2026)

Section

Translations

License

Copyright (c) 2026 Leonardo Nones; Linda Nochlin

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

The responsibility for obtaining written permission to use in the articles materials protected by copyright law lies entirely with the author(s). Ars is not responsible for copyright breaches made by its collaborators.

The authors have the copyrights and grant the journal the right of the first publication, with the article licensed under the Creative Commons BY-CC License.

Licensees have the right to copy, distribute, display, and carry out the work and make derivative works from it, including with commercial purposes, granted that they give the due credit to the author or licensor, as specified by them.

Licensees compromise to inform the appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made.

Respected the terms of the license, the licensors/authors are not allowed to revoke the conditions above mentioned.

After the publication of the articles, the authors keep the copyrights and the rights to republish the text exclusively in unpublished books and collections.

How to Cite

Nochlin, L. (2026). The Body in Pieces – Fragment as a Metaphor of Modernity (L. Nones, Trans.). ARS, 24, e-243985. https://doi.org/10.11606/issn.2178-0447.ars.2026.243985