Victimes de stéréotypes ou chantres de la modernité? L’ambiguïté de l’image de la femme dans l’affiche française de la Belle Époque

Mystical and meditative women, mothers, dancers, prostitutes - women dominate art of the 19th century. It would not be unreasonable to state that all art of this century was (re)invented for them and because of them. Graphic art does not escape this phenomenon. The poster designers seek to represent women in activities and attitudes that reflect the tastes of their time. Their image becomes a field of paradox: the woman is the one who becomes the figurehead of modernity, she plays sports, she rides a bicycle, she gets behind the wheel of the first motor vehicles. However, the superficiality of this freedom does not erase the pain of the corset of the social conditions for the majority of them. This paper will focus on the image of women in 19th-century French graphic art. The omnipresence of the feminine motif prompts us to highlight some aspects of this overexploitation of their image for advertising purposes: what is the nature of this image and in what measure is it in line with reality, how does this image fit into the perspective of emancipation?