Lascivious Statues: Galatea’s Animation in Eighteenth-Century France

Taking up the popularity of the Pygmalion and Galatea myth in eighteenth-century France, Alicia will be looking at the replication of marble sculptures by (or inspired by) Étienne-Maurice Falconet in Rococo paintings of seduction and libertine novels.

Lecture conducted in English.

Alicia Caticha (Ph.D., University of Virginia) is Assistant Professor in the Department of Art History at Northwestern University. She specializes in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century European sculpture and decorative arts with a particular focus on issues of materiality, colonialism, and popular culture. Her current research concerns the eighteenth-century French sculptor Étienne-Maurice Falconet and the replications and reverberations of his work in porcelain and sugar sculpture. She has published on the history of fashion from the eighteenth-century to the present day in Journal18, Eighteenth-Century Fiction, and American Quarterly. Caticha’s research has been supported by the Center for the Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, the Decorative Arts Trust, and the Newberry Library.

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