In the flesh: the representation of burlesque theatre in American art and visual culture

Unrestricted “In the Flesh: The Representation of Burlesque Theatre in American Art and Visual Culture” is a study of representations of American burlesque theatre from 1868 to the mid-twentieth century. Recent interest in burlesque, both scholarly and in the form of the nostalgic neo-burlesque movement, has centered on its transgressive, camp potential. While this potential is apparent in images of burlesque, it is diffused. The display of the female body became the featured draw of American burlesque theatre in 1868, and by the later decades of the nineteenth century, burlesque was considered a low theatrical form for a mostly male audience. Representations of burlesque engage issues of high and low, art and obscenity, as well as spectator and spectacle. Late nineteenth century images of burlesque and its female performers are characterized by exaggerated female display, exotic allusions, humor, and a carefully mediated tension between female performer and her male audience. These elements persisted in burlesque representations even as the theatrical genre evolved and declined. Diverse images including theatrical advertisements, popular media illustrations and photographs, and paintings by canonical artists reflected and helped constitute burlesque performance as sexually suggestive beyond the boundaries of conventional behavior and taste. In visual depictions, the parody and caricature that are part of the literary and theatrical tradition of burlesque are evident in inversions of gender expectations and pointed references to class distinctions. By the beginning of the twentieth century, American artists interested in urban spectacle were looking to popular entertainments as subjects for their work. The interest in burlesque as a subject from artists such as Reginald Marsh, Thomas Hart Benton, Edward Hopper, Mabel Dwight, and Stuyvesant Van Veen coincided with the increasingly salacious display of the female body on stage.; As a setting, burlesque afforded an opportunity to reveal the artificiality of glamour, to observe and depict the viewing of a female performance of nudity, and to draw attention to the relationship between spectator and spectacle. The endurance of the burlesque aesthetic that emerged in the later half of the nineteenth century demonstrates its currency as a means of exploring the display of the female body at the borders of high and low culture and art and obscenity.