The Three Grace Maillol Analysis

A Return to Order: the Interwar Influence The end of the First World War in 1918 left Europe in ruins, shocking society as the majority of the continent spent the war fighting itself. With millions killed, this war was one that impacted not only the battlefront, but also the home front. Governing bodies, social systems, and everyday life had all been upheaved by the conflict, and Europeans were seeking to retain any remnant of their easier lives pre-war. Maillol’s feminine ideal, as detailed out in earlier paragraphs, was a response to the war, after which Europe’s climate of thought paired beautifully with Maillol’s personal enamoredness with Classical Greece to permit Maillol’s distant, soft, idealized feminine form to be an aspect

Though the graces’ brazen nudity and the texturized, skin-like surface are not inherently classical. The classical elements are found in the wholeness, the unified volume of all three forms, the continuous curve of these seemingly soft forms, and their stoic, unseeing faces. Also inherently Greek are the graces

To Maillol, the ideal She is soft and curvaceous, beckoning and seemingly tangible, yet always out of reach. She is whole and voluminous, but up on a pedestal, remote and distant. She is inspired by the pedimental sculptures of Greek temples. She exemplifies what a country, torn apart by war, strives to be. This ideal Woman, standing in three forms on a pedestal in the light-filled upper landing of the Algur H. Meadows Museum, is Dina Vierny transposed, the spirit of Banyuls-sur-Mer’s simple seaside aura, the ideal example of an emphasis in volume over definition, an inviting and beckoning sensuous experience, and a product of an ideology that strove to patch up a broken country. This ideal, soft and sensuous, but remote, is cast in lead by Aristide