This book considers questions of materiality and painting, focalized
through the notoriously obscure work of Georges Rouault, and offers an
innovative critical approach to the various questions raised by this
challenging modernist. Described as a difficult and dark painter,
Rouault's oeuvre is deeply experimental. Images of the circus emerge
from a plethora of chaotic marks, while numerous landscapes appear as if
ossified in thick paint.
Rouault's work explodes the genre of painting, drawing upon the residue
of Gustave Moreau's symbolism, the extremities of Fauvism, and the
radical theatrical experiments of Alfred Jarry. The repetitions and
re-workings at the heart of Rouault's process defy conventional
chronological treatment, and place the emphasis upon the
coming-into-being of the work of art. Ultimately, the book reveals the
process of making as both a search for understanding and a response to
the problematic world of the 20th century.