Date of Award

2026

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Department

Art Business

Abstract

This dissertation investigates the complex dimensions of gendered valuation through a comparative study of Amedeo Modigliani, Suzanne Valadon, and Paula Modersohn-Becker. Leading figures in the modernist reimagining of the nude in the early twentieth century, with shared ties to the Parisian milieu, their markets have since followed markedly different trajectories. Combining market and historiographical analysis with feminist theory, this study considers the structural, ideological, and discursive mechanisms that underpin these asymmetries and continue to inform the artists’ reception and valuation today.

By interrogating the gender ideologies, institutional barriers, and critical discourses behind these market asymmetries, this study argues that the valuation gap between modernist painters of the nude must be retrieved in the entrenched cultural attitudes that historically governed women’s participation and reception within a genre traditionally defined by male perspectives, and within the structural conditions favouring male artists. These mechanisms account for Valadon and Modersohn-Becker’s comparatively modest market trajectories when measured against the longstanding institutional endorsement and symbolic advantages that fostered Modigliani’s early canonisation and subsequent elevation to blue-chip status.

Download

Share

COinS