Doctorate: Agnes Sawer - Artist under Suspicion of Kitsch

Renoir portrayed his lover Lise Tréhot in the famous painting "Lise with a Parasol". But the model is not the centre of attention. It is the dress which takes centre stage in the painting. "His figures often pose like mannequins. They are turned backwards, the viewer observes them from the side, looking at bows, ruffles and fabrics," explains Agnes Sawer. There is even a shadow on Lise's face, while the dress is radiant.

During her studies at Ruhr University Bochum, Agnes Sawer noticed the omnipresent depiction of fashion in 19th century French painting - especially in Renoir's work: "I wondered what role the dresses and accessories played in the overall picture," recalls the art historian. In her doctoral thesis at Leuphana, she examined not only fashion, but also textiles, which appear in the form of curtains, cushions, carpets and upholstery in Renoir's interiors, as well as the images of handicraft that frequently appear in the artist's oeuvre. Central to the research was the extent to which the characteristics of textiles - for example their two-dimensionality - are reflected in the works. The depictions in the paintings were not intended to reflect trends in fashion and interiors: "With Renoir, the textile rather becomes a foil for the negotiation of pictorial means and the classical pictorial space, which, as later with Henri Matisse or Édouard Vuillard, increasingly tilts towards the surface. Abstract tendencies can already be observed in Renoir's work," explains Agnes Sawer.

"Renoir did not look at the female body with disrespect"

Even if there are no dresses or fabrics in Renoir's paintings, textiles seem to play a role. In the famous painting "Bal du moulin de la Galette" (1876), which shows a dance in Montmartre based on the gallant parties of the Rococo period, Agnes Sawer illustrates how the structure of the ruffle - a popular fashion accessory in the 18th century - is imprinted in the composition of the picture. The late nudes also have a textile feel, explains Agnes Sawer: "The bodies unfold, like fabrics, as haptically perceptible surfaces in the picture." She thus contradicts the criticism of feminist art researchers in the 1980s: "Renoir did not look at the female body with disrespect. He did not idealise his models, nor did he flaunt them. Renoir was interested in the surfaces, the haptic, the textile. The female body was not sexualised as in Alexandre Cabanel's Venus, for example, who is lying there powerless and unable to protect herself from the gaze of men," explains Agnes Sawer.

Renoir's interest in textiles can be traced back to his origins and his professional training. The artist came from a family of craftsmen. His father was a tailor, his mother a seamstress. But the 13-year-old Pierre-Auguste was sent on an apprenticeship to a porcelain painter, as the wages were higher there. Renoir always saw himself as a "painter worker" and propagated a combination of art and craft. He also learnt about rococo motifs during his apprenticeship. "Renoir often visited the Louvre. The painting "Diana in the Bath" by François Boucher never left him," reports Agnes Sawer. Renoir did not follow the realistic tendencies of his time, but instead orientated himself in many ways towards 18th century painting, whose gallant celebrations, nudes, and genre depictions he combined with the contemporary. However, despite its modernity, the Rococo and everything that drew on it was suspected of being kitsch in the 19th century. The era represented the rosy and pretty - and was frowned upon, explains Agnes Sawer: "Strangely enough, we attribute more authenticity to images when the ugly is included. I've always wondered why that is." However, the fact that Renoir, like the artists of the Rococo period, refrains from dissonance in his works does not mean that we are dealing with kitsch here, says Agnes Sawer. In terms of content, the motif of the fête galante is linked to the tradition of the idyll, to Theocritus' and Virgil's poetry, which was always coloured by social criticism. Accordingly, Renoir's paintings do not show us a transfiguration of reality, but alternative counter-designs in which a longing for harmonious coexistence is articulated.

Up until the French Revolution, men wore make-up, wigs and high heels

"Looking at Rococo culture from today's perspective reveals the modernity of the century," explains Agnes Sawer. Up until the French Revolution, men wore make-up, wigs and high heels like Louis XIV. After the French Revolution, fashion was viewed negatively as pomp and chichi. "The man slips into a suit that resembles a work uniform and becomes part of the public sphere. The stigma of the fashionable appearance is delegated to the woman. She stays at home and with her beautiful clothes becomes her husband's adornment," explains Agnes Sawer.

Renoir, by contrast, does not cater to this cliché in his paintings and plays with gender identities. As in the Rococo period, the boundaries between women and men, which were reinforced in the 19th century, blurred in his paintings. In his mythological depiction "The Judgement of Paris", a female model, Gabrielle Renard, is used to portray the ancient prince, and in the painting "Mme Henriot en travesti", Renoir has the actress Henriette Henriot slip into a pageboy role. Renoir also painted his sons with long hair and bows on their heads.

The writer Guy de Maupassant accused Renoir of seeing everything rosy and thus anticipated the prejudice that largely characterised the reception of Renoir in the 20th century, although the artist was intensively received and appreciated by the pioneers of abstraction such as Matisse, Claude Monet and the Nabis artists, a group of painters that also included Paul Gauguin. Renoir's paintings came under suspicion of kitsch, especially because of his turn towards Rococo, explains Agnes Sawer: "The American critic Clement Greenberg defined kitsch as something reproduced that offers no level of reflection. This description does not apply to Renoir's art: if you look, you will recognise many modern ideas and an innovative pictorial design based on an examination of textiles."

Agnes Sawer is curatorial director at the Emschergenossenschaft and the Lippeverband (Essen) and curates art that reflects the ecological reorganisation of the Emscher and Lippe river system.

She studied art history and Spanish philology at the Universidad de Navarra in Pamplona, the Sorbonne in Paris and the Ruhr University Bochum. There she wrote her master's thesis under Prof Dr Beate Söntgen on Édouard Manet. When the art historian received her call to Leuphana University Lüneburg, Agnes Sawer followed her. She completed her doctorate under Prof. Dr Beate Söntgen, Professor of Art History, on fashion and textile structures in the paintings of Pierre-Auguste Renoir and was awarded a Leuphana doctoral scholarship. Her dissertation will be published in autumn 2024. She also held seminars and, in this context, visited exhibitions on French Impressionism with students in Basel and Paris. Agnes Sawer taught at the Folkwang Academy of Arts and the Ruhr University Bochum.