Table Of ContentNomadic Narratives,
Visual Forces
Kristi E. Siegel,
General Editor
Vol. 1
PETER LANG
New York (cid:121) Washington, D.C./Baltimore (cid:121) Bern
Frankfurt (cid:121) Berlin (cid:121) Brussels (cid:121) Vienna (cid:121) Oxford
MARIA TAMBOUKOU
Nomadic Narratives,
Visual Forces
Gwen John’s Letters and Paintings
PETER LANG
New York (cid:121) Washington, D.C./Baltimore (cid:121) Bern
Frankfurt (cid:121) Berlin (cid:121) Brussels (cid:121) Vienna (cid:121) Oxford
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Tamboukou, Maria.
Nomadic narratives, visual forces: Gwen John’s letters and paintings / Maria Tamboukou.
p. cm. — (Studies in life writing: biography, autobiography, memoir; v. 1)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. John, Gwen, 1876–1939—Criticism and interpretation. 2. John, Gwen,
1876–1939—Correspondence. 3. Painters—England—Correspondence.
4. Women painters—England—Correspondence. I. Title.
ND497.J613T36 759.2’29—dc22 2010021237
ISBN 978-1-4331-0860-0
ISSN 1945-2942
Bibliographic information published by Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek.
Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the “Deutsche
Nationalbibliografie”; detailed bibliographic data is available
on the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de/.
Cover image: Gwen John, Welsh 1876–1939, worked in France 1903–39
Interior with figures 1898–99, oil on canvas, 46.0 x 33.4 cm
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Gift of Mrs C. H. Collins-Baker, 1947
The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability
of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity
of the Council of Library Resources.
© 2010 Peter Lang Publishing, Inc., New York
29 Broadway, 18th floor, New York, NY 10006
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All rights reserved.
Reprint or reproduction, even partially, in all forms such as microfilm,
xerography, microfiche, microcard, and offset strictly prohibited.
Printed in Germany
To Mihalis Zervos
Contents
Acknowledgments................................................................................................ix
Introduction: Mapping Gwen John: Lives, Lines and Images...........................1
Making Cartographies of Power and Desire................................................4
Chapter One. Letters, Paintings and the Event ...............................................15
Letters and Paintings as Events...................................................................18
To Come......................................................................................................20
Who Writes or Paints?................................................................................22
Nomadic Narratives , Visual Forces...........................................................26
Chapter Two. Epistolary Narratives and the Nomadic Self.............................29
Gwen John: A Nomadic Narratable Subject..............................................30
Letters as Nomadic Narratives....................................................................33
Drafting the Self: Openness in Epistolary Narratives................................36
Interior Styles, Extravagant Lines...............................................................40
Pronoun Ambiguity, Names and Imaginary Figures..................................42
Narrative as Force........................................................................................45
Chapter Three. Between the Letter and the Self-Portrait.................................51
Talking of Genres: the Self-Portrait............................................................53
Portraiture as a Visual Form of Life Writing.............................................58
Peircian semiotics and beyond.............................................................59
Farewell to the Self......................................................................................62
The Slade self-portraits.........................................................................64
A young artist in Paris..........................................................................67
Nude in the mirror: the artist and the model.....................................68
Painting the Self, Playing with the Self......................................................72
viii •NOMADIC NARRATIVES•
Chapter Four. Beyond Figuration and Narration............................................77
Portraits and Faces......................................................................................79
On the Figure and the Motif......................................................................83
Forces, Rhythm and Form..........................................................................88
On Colours.................................................................................................93
Colourism, Forces and Figures in John’s Paintings...................................96
Charting forces in John’s portraits....................................................101
Chapter Five. In the Fold: Spaces of Solitude................................................107
Charting a New Geography or perhaps Painting it.................................109
Plane One: the Room, the Interior and the Studio.................................111
Objects, Faces and Spaces..................................................................113
Spatial Entanglements........................................................................115
Plane Two: the Street, the Café, the Public Garden................................116
Plane Three: the Countryside, the River, the Sea....................................121
Epistolary Geographies, Nomadic Becomings.........................................124
Chapter Six. “My Dear Master”: Between Power and Desire........................127
Love Letters as Technologies of the Self..................................................128
Intertextual Connections..........................................................................131
The “Master”, the lover and the artist...............................................133
In the fold of reading and writing.....................................................136
Styles of passion: The Letters of the Portuguese Nun.............................139
Discourses of pathos: reading Clarissa...............................................142
Power and Desire in Epistolary Technologies of the Self........................145
Chapter Seven. Becomings: Of Cats and Other Signs...................................151
Cats as Companions and as Epistolary Signs...........................................153
Real and Imagined Spaces, Human and Non-Human Animals..............155
Narratives of Becoming-Cat......................................................................156
Becoming-Cat, Becoming-Other...............................................................162
Chapter Eight. Heterotemporalities...............................................................165
Whose Archive?.........................................................................................166
Different Spaces, Displaced Temporalities..............................................168
Bibliography.....................................................................................................175
Index.................................................................................................................185
Acknowledgments
This book largely draws on research at the Archives of the Rodin Museum in
Paris between May and June 2005. I am grateful to the University of East
London for funding this research visit as well as for granting me two
sabbatical periods that enabled me to analyse the letters in spring 2006 and
complete the manuscript in spring 2010. I particularly want to thank Virginie
Delaforge and Véronique Mattiussi, archivists at the Rodin Museum Archives
for being so helpful and accommodating while I was working there in May and
June 2005. My thanks also to Anne Marie Chabot at the Rodin Museum
Photographic Services for facilitating the process of reproduction of the image
of Gwen John’s Autoportrait à la lettre.
My research has further drawn on Gwen John’s letters to her friend
Ursula Tywhritt housed at the National Library of Wales in Aberystwyth.
Many thanks to the Art and Humanities Research Council for funding the
purchase of photocopies of these letters, to Sarah John for granting me per-
mission to have access to the manuscripts and to Anwen Pierce and Cyril
Evans at the NLW for facilitating this process.
Jennie Moloney at the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne has been
very helpful in the process of granting me permission to use John’s painting
Interior with Figures as the front cover of this book. Naheed Khan and Jo
Sherman at the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of East
London have taken care of the procedures for permission: my thanks to them
and the School for their contribution.
My colleagues and PhD students at the Centre for Narrative Research at
UEL have been great. Thank you Molly Andrews, Corinne Squire and Cigdem
Esin. It was through the activities of our Centre that my initial ideas around
the analysis of John’s letters were disseminated, discussed, criticized and
changed. Erika Cudworth has given me great pointers in the non-human ani-
mals area: I don’t know how I would have written Chapter Seven on Gwen
John’s relationship with her cats without Erika’s advice, although I know that
she does not agree with Deleuze and Guattari’s approach. Linda Sandino has
guided me through discursive paths of Art History: so many things I needed to
be alerted to as a sociologist … Sue Middleton as a visiting scholar at CNR in
