Frag 02

American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (ASECS)
Playful Constructions and Fragonard's Swinging Scenes Author(s): Jennifer Milam Source: Eighteenth-Century Studies, Vol. 33, No. 4, The Culture of Risk and Pleasure (Summer, 2000), pp. 543-559 Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press. Sponsor: American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (ASECS). Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/30054162 . Accessed: 21/08/2013 10:13
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PLAYFUL CONSTRUCTIONS AND FRAGONARD'S SWINGING SCENES
JenniferMilam
Happy Hazards of the Swing is Jean-Honore Fragonard's most familiar paintheld ing, to be highly representative of its time, a paradigm of rococo pleasure and aristocratic decadence (fig.l).1 Since 1982, when Donald Posner published his compelling analysis of the swinging-woman motif, interpretation of the scene has been guided by iconographic readings of female fickleness and erotic love.2 An emblematic tradition denoting inconstancy partially informs depictions of swinging women. Yet, when taken as a solution to an iconographic puzzle, such an interpretation does not account for nuances of difference where significance often lies. Fragonard painted not one but three versions of a woman's ride on a swing (figs. 3 and 6). He varied his approach to the theme on each of these canvases. For this artist at least, the swing was not simply a stock motif suited to easy interpretation and execution, unaltered by compositional change. On the contrary, by elaborating on the notion of swinging as a game of visual distortion, Fragonard manipulated and transformed emblematic conventions in order to muse on the vertiginous experience occasioned by a playful application of paint. Fragonard and his contemporaries were familiar with a range of artistic and cultural codes relating to swings. This article considers these codes and explores how and in what ways they operate in relation to Fragonard's depictions of the amusement.3 When Fragonard represented swinging women, he engaged artistic and emblematic traditions linking the subjectmatter to aristocraticleisure and love. His paintings test and challenge the viewer's recognition of sources, a skill valued among eighteenthcentury amateurs. To seize upon a recognized motif as an exclusive key to meaning, in the Department JenniferMilam is Lecturer of Art History and Theoryat the Universityof a bookon theideaof playin eighteenth-century French Sydney.Sheis currently preparing painting.
Eighteenth-Century Studies, vol. 33, no. 4 (2000) Pp. 543-559.
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however, ignores the transformative character of art making and neglects the formative effects on the artist and the viewer of specific historical and social landscapes. Indeed, the concept of closure is inimical to the essentially open-ended character of play. Fragonard's constructions with paint are linked to concepts, some emblematic, some experienced codes of daily life, but meaning is not exhausted by one or even all of these. Instead, his images insist upon a sequence of free associations that is in the nature of play, keeping interpretation alive and presenting an imaginative exchange as central to aesthetic judgment.4 The fundamental force of play in Fragonard's approach to art making exists in tandem with the eroticism of his brush explored by Mary Sheriff in her groundbreaking monograph.5 Focusing on the artist's and the viewer's knowledge of signs and codes outside the framework of traditional emblematics, Sheriff's semiotic analyses have extended the location of meaning into Fragonard's manner of depiction, assigning it a privileged role in the signifying process. My proposals here are not an attempt to replace her conclusions, but rather to enhance them with an exploration of Fragonard's playful aesthetic. I will argue that his manner of constructing certain images beckons the viewer as playmate. In this signifying game, images about play become acts of creative play operating at the highest level of imagination for both the artist and the beholder. The aims of this essay are threefold. First, to reposition our understanding of Fragonard'sdepictions of swings within a pertinent cultural context of play. Eighteenthcentury sources disclose a distinct interest in games that privilege spectatorship and optical distortion and have yet to be taken into account.6 Second, to offer a model for viewing Fragonard's scenes with swinging women through a consideration of the full range and potential of meanings. In these images ostensibly depicting the same subject matter, we will see how the artist moves between a variety of perspectives on play: from the physical and the social, to the emblematic, to the aesthetic. Third, to identify the specific and elaborate analogies between play and art that are evident in these images. I suggest that Fragonard's swinging scenes invite the viewer to participate in a visual game that not only resembles the depicted amusement, but also arouses the imagination and the senses, and operates to recommence the game at every instant.
"Everyone knows the swing," wrote R6tif de la Bretonne in Monsieur Nicolas (1794-7). Throughout the eighteenth century, elaborately designed or impromptu devices were set up in the countryside, chateau garden and urban park, enjoyed by all levels of French society. Some were extravagant and grand, like the four-man swing built for courtiers at Marly, while others were piecemeal constructions of materials locally available, such as the swing made out of horse harnesses and hung from an old apple tree in R6tif's native Sacy.7 Whatever the superficial differences, a common characteristic of these devices-indeed the defining quality of the game itself-is the pleasurable vertigo brought on by the oscillations of the swing. This desire for confusion and delirium shared by all players at this particular moment in France demands some consideration for reasons that are significant if we want to understand Fragonard's swinging scenes. According to Roger Caillois, a provocative connection exists between the dominant characteristics of games taken up by individual societies and their collective
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values.8 Perhaps in a culture overwhelmed by ceremony and control over the body we should not be surprised to learn that a preference for vertigo games expresses a longing for disorder and a desire to escape an otherwise stable perception of the world through the delirium of play. Swinging in ancien regime France stimulated confusion and permitted actions, positions and free display that were prohibited in life outside the game as violations of social propriety. In this way swings in particular, as well as other vertigo games such as blindman's buff and seesaws (subjects also popular with rococo artists), provided a space in which behavior and physical expression were given new liberties. The official reason for setting up a swing at Marly in 1691 was to provide an alternative to cards, principally for younger courtiers so that they would not become bored or foolishly spending all their time at gaming tables.9 But swinging had a more subtle function, one related to elite notions of status through display. On the one hand, swinging and other vertigo games involved disorienting motion, thereby permitting players greater freedom of physical expression, elsewhere strictly controlled by court etiquette. On the other hand, part of the purpose of this type of play among the aristocracy was to display natural grace in "spontaneous" action for the gathered spectators.10 The visual entertainment that swings provided for those on the ground was part of the attraction for upper- and lower-class participants alike. However, bawdy motives for watching, like those pictured in Fragonard's Happy Hazards and in Franqois Eisen's more rustic Swing of 1770 (figs. 1 and 2), were more obviously evident outside the elite space of the court. During the last decades of the ancien regime, swings were constructed in urban parks, particularly in gardens that were part of commercial enterprises. The Redoute chinoise in the Foire Saint-Laurent had both a single and a double swing for well-heeled customers, while the swing in Torre's summer Waux-Hall was much less expensive and used by members of the different estates." The swings at these amusement parks were not innocuous rides. They disrupted physical propriety normally observed off the swing. Within the exhiliration of vertigo play, swinging permitted occasions of sexual disorder where uninhibited positions revealed the body and spectators glimpsed views that were usually hidden from sight. Eighteenth-century Parisians were well aware of these moments when the rules of decorum were suspended. According to Franqois Cognel, who visited Paris in 1787, the swing in Waux-Hall's garden contributed to the diversions of the place, not just for the players, but specifically for the spectators: "women there assume a bearing even freer than elsewhere, and the game of the swing permits many entertaining licenses for the spectator, which nevertheless can be attributed to accidental causes."12 Expectations of propriety were not restricted to the city, and Parisians were not the only ones who valued occasions in play when decorum could be temporarily abandoned and eroticism fueled. R6tif describes such indecorous visual pleasures provided by village swingers in Sacy, where girls sometimes "experienced certain unpleasantnesses when it transpired, during play, that good-for-nothings like Grand Colas were attempting to put them into highly compromising postitions.""3 R6tif's bucolic reminiscence echoes the erotic risks visualized by Fragonard and Eisen. Such views were part of the disorder caused by the vertigo game and as such occasioned moments of chance eroticism normally safeguarded by rules of modesty. The girls might protest the actions of those "good-for-nothings" who aimed to compromise
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FIGURE 1. Jean-Honore Fragonard, The Happy Hazards of the Swing. Reproduced by permission of the Trustees of the Wallace Collection, London.
their virtue, but they still participated and opened themselves up to this risk. The games at the Redoute chinoise, the Waux-Hall and the countryside of Sacy permitted a degree of sexual license at various levels of society within a specific setting doubly safeguarded from the decorous concerns of reality by the fantasy frames of play and the garden. In addition to offering moments that suspended the control of decorum, swinging was recommended as an exercise becoming to an elite class in need of remedies for their languid illnesses, often characterized as the vapors or melancholia.14 Several
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FIGURE 2. Franqois Eisen, The Swing. Courtesy of Musee de Brou, Bourg-en-Bresse, France.
treatises on physical education appeared around mid-century, written with the goals of curing these privileged disorders and improving the pleasure of life. Medical texts intended for upper-classreaders, such as Joseph Raulin's Traitedes affections vaporeuses du sexe (1769), identified the causes of the vapors as a sedentary life and encouraged exercise as a means for prolonging youthful vigor.s Raulin and others like him specifically recommended easy, amusing activities that could take place in nature, where the beauty of the landscape, the fresh air, the natural sights and smells could stir the senses and refresh both body and soul. Samuel Tissot summed up the perceived benefits in his Gymnastique medicinale et chirurgicale (1780): "In a word, the countryside
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offers a thousand delights and a multitude of objects suitable for the relief, treatment and cure of sick people who are sent there."16 Nature was a space associated with relaxation and the improvement of health. For the nobility, however, exercise could not involve much physical exertion or endanger delicate constitutions. Further disdain for forceful, physical sports led to a preference for pleasant games that provided opportunities for good company, polite conversation, and a handsome presentation of the self. Noble rank could not be compromised by activities that produced anything other than pure leisure.17 Swinging, customarily an outdoor game, was an ideal amusement to satisfy these requirements, providing a pleasing combination of movement (necessary for good health) and ease (required by elite status). As Tissot noted, the body was always partly at rest while the player remained seated on the swing. When put into motion, the labor of the swing (and not of the swinger) exposed the body to a variety of postures and caused the muscles to react by force of habit. The swinger received the physical benefits of exercise without an unbecoming expression of effort, having the "double effect" of being both active and passive at once.'8 Moreover, the sudden and uncertain motion inherent to swinging was recognized as stimulating a cheerful reaction on the part of the player, inspiring a gaiety that made the diversion truly desirable. The Encyclopedie mentions a vertige momentane that a whirling body could produce. More importantly, the entry identifies this temporary and sometimes pleasurable vertigo, caused in play, with "a defect in the exercise of vision" caused by internal forces that can affect the optic nerves. Somewhat curiously, the author describes a parallel between certain processes of vision and the vertiginous effects produced by exterior objects set in circular motion.19 Swinging was not only enjoyed and popular because it occasioned erotic views, liberated the body and provided appropriate exercise for the elite. Players also aimed to stimulate pleasure through visual distortion-an aim that is not dissimilarto Fragonard'smanner of representingthe subject.
A comparison of Fragonard's three versions of this theme-The Happy Hazards of the Swing, The Little Swing, and The Swing (figs. 1, 3, and 6)-demonstrates his playful approach and dedication to interpretive invention. The type of emblematic, narrative agenda that Posner first proposed for Happy Hazards is not apparent in the other two images.20 Despite similarities like the swinging figures (all female, dressed predominantly in pink, acting as the focal point for the composition) and the setting (within gardens and parks), differences between the paintings start to become evident in the relationship between the figures and their natural environment. Most obviously, the size of the figures in proportion to the natural elements of the landscape vary in each depiction. The figures are small in The Little Swing and The Swing, either enclosed by dense hedges or set within expansive horizons. In contrast, the figures in Happy Hazards are quite large, and in significant areas the tree, leaves, and flowers are carefully delineated. Seemingly existing to support and enhance meaning in the figures' actions, the garden setting in this painting appears artificial and stagelike. Even the overgrown bushes in which the young man hides himself appear more like a prop than a convincing feature of landscaped nature, so much so that his hat is positioned to cap part of the flowering bush. This emphasis on artifice foregrounds symbols within the painting, making it impossible for the initiated viewer to ignore
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emblematics or the erotic content of the scene. The male hat, as Posner has shown, was commonly used in rococo art to hide an erection. Here, the hat is off, indicating male abandon to excitement and passion.21 The opening of the cap conveniently catches up some of the rose bush (a conventional symbol of female sexuality) and with this fitting of parts quite literally makes a visual pun on sexual engagement.22 Happy Hazards' iconographic and formal structure accords with the wellknown story of its commission. "A gentleman of the Court" was sent to Fragonard after approaching another artist to paint his mistress "on a swing that a bishop would set in motion." The patron asked to have himself included in the scene, positioned so that he "would be able to see the legs of this beautiful girl" or even more, so he says, if the painter wanted "to enliven" his picture.23 Conventional iconography and encoded motifs build upon the patron's erotic intentions. Swinging alludes to the fickleness of women in the emblematic tradition, but also, with its rhythmic motion, to the act of lovemaking. More specific symbols-a tossed shoe (female abandon to passion), an unshod foot (lost virginity), an eager lap dog (impatient desire), a statue of Cupid who silences with one hand and pulls arrows from his quiver with another (love at work), and a hat that caps a budding bush (sexual engagement)-all collude with the primary emblem of the swing to create an encoded, erotic scene.24 Apparently,this risque painting was intended for the gentleman'spetite-maison, from which the commission was first proposed. Such a setting was meant to excite amorous passion, and could be designed and decorated with this purpose in mind.25 It is tempting to believe that the "accidental" views commonly glimpsed at public fairs inspired the patron's initial request. An amusement that allowed women "to balance themselves in positions conforming to their intentions"26 certainly seems the obvious choice for a subject, since the painting would adorn a space in which the rules of decorum were regularly abandoned in favour of the delirium of passion and physical expression. This patron was no doubt hoping for a decorative work that would encourage a similar degree of sexual license, albeit safeguarded for propriety within the superimposed frames of emblematics, artifice, play, and a secluded locale. Happy Hazards responds to a commission for a distinctive erotic picture intended for an intimate retreat with the general players and their positions and relationships already defined. Confined to a private space for specific viewers who would recognize themselves as the players, the image would have stimulated both memories of past trysts and the anticipation of future surprises and pleasures.27 The figures appearing in the scene might even be generic or actual portrayals of the patron and his mistress.28 If so, the painting functioned as a scene of unbridled passion in which the principles of play and mimesis are compounded and confused with reality. Like swings that permitted the accidental exposure of sexual parts, symbolic motifs are deployed throughout as mere accidents of representation. And like those spectators who anticipated the licentious displays allowed within the frame of this amusement, the knowledgeable viewer enjoyed the overt eroticism of Happy Hazards contained within discrete symbols and sanctioned by the framework of art.
Happy Hazards can be approached as a puzzle to be solved by piecing together the commission, the emblem, and the symbolic motifs. As convincing as this type of reading might be, it excludes the possibility that Fragonard's use of the
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FIGURE 3. Jean-Honore Fragonard, The Little Swing, Private Collection. Photograph Courtesy of Max Williams.
iconographic schema is playful rather than controlling, motivated by erotic function and aiming at complex aesthetic concerns rather than limited to an illustration of a specific erotic event. Moreover, the motifs that build the emblematic structure and demand to be read in Happy Hazards remain unresolved in Fragonard's other depictions of swings. In The Little Swing (fig. 3), for instance, the amorous associations of the fountain sculpture of putti and dolphins recall those in Happy Hazards. Here, however, the putto with his bow and arrow out has no real target, the line of his aim falling well short of the swinger into the pool of water. Unlike the silencing Cupid in Happy Hazards, who faces and responds to the major action of the scene, this putto remains part of the fountain and hence narratively inactive. In Fragonard's two later depictions, none of the conventional iconographic structures that define the swing as a symbolic motif are to be found. The man and woman that propel the device in The Swing (fig. 4), for example, cannot be easily read as suitors competing for the affections of the swinging woman. This threesome makes little sense as a traditional emblem of fickleness, inconstancy or sexual engagement. Likewise, the realization that the woman on The Little Swing propels herself unaided through space comes as a surprise to those viewers searching for an unmistakable sign of courtship (fig. 5). Even the figure closest to the swing is another female, as are the majority of the figures in the garden. The most prominent male figure in the scene reclines in the foreground, yet unlike the suitor with an all-knowing, all-seeing gaze in Happy Hazards, he does not reveal a titillating motive to the beholder. His position serves only to direct the viewer's eye back through the painted garden. In neither image is a man the sole figure responsible for the woman's ride, nor is the swinging female isolated with a male figure as a couple. Such breakswith emblematic expectations disrupt legibility and indicate that other interpretive strategies must be employed.
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FIGURE 4. Jean-Honor4 Fragonard, The Swing (detail), Samuel H. Kress Collection. Photograph Board of Trustees, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
FIGURE 5. Jean-Honore Fragonard, The Little Swing (detail), Private Collection. Photograph Courtesy of Max Williams.
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Nature takes on a greater role in these images. Amorous motifs are held to a minimum and do not carry the weight of emblems, receiving less emphasis and giving less direction than those in Happy Hazards. Rather than being part of a precise iconographic program, the individual figures, the sculptural pieces, and the swing combine with the appeal of the landscape to contribute to an unforced, unhurried scene of leisure, exercise and pleasure.The viewer follows gestures and poses from figure to figure, taking in the details of each scene, unhindered by emblematics. Meaning is not located for the viewer. Like the aimless arrow of the sculptural putto in The Little Swing, it is liberated from a fixed target. The structureof this image encourages an involved response. Fragonard's Little Swing is a representation of a specific amusement in nature that provokes similar and related reactions of pleasure on the part of the viewer. Significantly, the image is not a mere reflection of play, but acts as a parallel experience of leisure. Viewing the painting is both active and passive, stimulating a series of responses that recreate the feelings of a familiar pastime. The viewer enters the composition through the central figure of the swinging woman, passes with the bright light falling on the sculptural group, follows the general aim of the putto's arrow, around the edge of the pool, to the groups of figures scattered throughout the scene, and back to the swing via the woman in the blue dress with her arm raised. Returned to a central position in this way, the eye is not left to languish but is pulled by the motion implied in the taut rope of the swing through the arch to the light-infused space of untamed nature beyond the hedge. The viewer's eye is kept in constant motion, attempting to make out forms in the shadows and to complete the shapes that the artist merely suggested. The predominance of shade in the scene creates the sensation of being out in the late afternoon, yet none of the figures prepare to leave. They relax in the recess of nature. And the viewer relaxes too, unable to make out specific features, directional gazes, or to decode specific motifs. The viewer considers parallels between the fictive world in The Little Swing and his or her own experiences. Through the faculties of imagination, he or she recalls the experience of swinging and watching other swingers, motivated not by erotic glimpses but the memory of an outdoor game befitting elite status. Active and passive sensations, the feelings caused by unforeseen fluctuations in movements, the desire for disorder that frees expression, all are re-experienced without apparent effort, enticing the viewer to internalize the subject matter. Fragonard structured his composition, brushwork, and light effects in The Little Swing around the theme of an ideal amusement that specifically linked physical movement and ease in order to draw parallels with an ideal viewing process that can be simultaneously beneficial and elite. Similar to the body seated on a moving swing, the eye that contemplates the painting is both active and passive. First, the viewer comes upon the picture, passively noting its existence. Then the image sets the eye in motion, in a manner analogous to the mechanism of a swing, destabilizing perception through confusion and euphoria. The painting's vertiginous forms cause the viewer to experience the visual surprises of putting together loose brushwork within areas diffused by light or hidden by shadows to create a unified image, picking out details and uncovering every element of the composition. Like the ropes that transport the figure out of the shaded enclosure, through the arch, to the fully-lit expanse of the landscape beyond the garden, the image transports the viewer past the awareness of paint, color, and brushwork, through the metaphor of light, to the realm of the imagination.
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FIGURE 6. Jean-Honore Fragonard, The Swing, Samuel H. Kress Collection. Photograph Board of Trustees, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
The recreation of the game re-created in the mind of the viewer also seems to be the aim of The Swing (fig. 6), but the elicited response varies from The Little Swing specifically in relation to the expansive natural setting. On a canvas more than twice the size of Fragonard's other swinging pictures, the setting assumes a greater significance, causing the viewer to linger in the spaciousness of the garden and extended landscape, guided through a number of figural and formal elements to consider the relationship between nature, culture, and play from an insistently physical perspective. Here, the swing has longer ropes, pulled by not just one person but two, seemingly able to move higher and wider than the swings in the other two pictures. Surrounding the figures are huge trees, wondrous clouds, high cliffs, and distant vistas. Everything appears to encourage the viewer to look out, to expand his or her horizons, not to be limited by the view within the frame. In this respect, one element of the composition should not be overlooked. The female figure sitting on the very
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edge of the park extends her normal vision with a telescope. Yet she does not look out to the vastness of nature, but in toward the woman on the swing. Both figures (like the viewer) willingly alter their otherwise stable perceptions of the objective world: one through distorted vision, the other through disorienting motion. Visually, this link is emphasized. The woman with the telescope is a counterpoint to the swinger, wearing the same colors and style in her outfit, in a position that is her reverse. The swinger leads the viewer across to the right of the canvas, the figure with the telescope directs the viewer back to the left. Together they explore the pleasures of their subjective worlds. For the beholder, vision and interpretation oscillate between these two figures, causing the imagination to trace the motion of the swing as if it were moving back and forth across the canvas. The manner in which the viewer is led through the image thus joins with the idea of visual distortion provoked by the swing and the telescope. All three are occasions of temporary vertigo stimulating pleasure through a corruption of vision. In this image, the swing becomes a vehicle of physical and mental transport, serving to move the figure and the viewer into the alternative playlands of leisure and art. The viewer interacts with the visual elements of the scene to derive pleasures similar to those represented in the subject: effortless recreation, an enjoyment of nature, the psychological and even medicinal benefits of a late afternoon spent outdoors. The subject matter might locate the place and value of leisure in eighteenth-century life for the twentieth-century viewer; however, the playful image resonates with additional associations and parallels. Just as the garden and game move inhabitants or players into an imaginary world where an otherwise stable perception is altered by a swing or a telescope, the representation of amusements removes the viewer from the immediate social surroundings and absorbs him or her within the context of the painting. The social function of gardens, games, and art are not far removed from one another. Each provides a means for escape and for pleasure.
In light of the variety of meanings evidenced by The Little Swing and The Swing, viewer response to Happy Hazards was not and should not be limited to a consideration of iconography. Even the commission clearly stipulating a picture that will titillate through voyeurism remains ambiguous, making no explicit reference to the emblematic significance of the swing and failing to provide explanatory details. However, what the commission requests in essence and what the image assures in practice is an erotic game involving imagination, sensation, and open-ended interpretation, induced by the subject and the materials of art making. Significantly, all elements of the composition do not lead to a single idea. Like the structure of a game, viewers are guided toward numerous possibilities and combinations. Exploring the image-following diagonals and spirals around the composition, into and out of spatial recesses-the viewer is effectively put on a swing, where vision is distorted by the painted vertigo game. First, the eye focuses on the swinging woman and the bright, thick impastos of paint that form her dress. Light effects are brightest here, the center of the composition. Following this figure's gaze to the lower left corner of the painting, the viewer spots a man lying in the bushes. The impastos delineating the ruffles of his coat match those fashioning his companion's dress and connect these figures, as nowhere else in the picture is paint so thick. At this corner,
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the eye moves back up along the extended arm of this man, noting his hat, following his gaze to the feminine skin peeking out above her stocking. Back at the central figure, the viewer follows the strong light up the spiralling rope to the gnarled tree branch and down the brightly lit trunk to the older figure at the right who pulls the swing's ropes. Once in this shaded corner of the composition, the viewer begins to take in the details: the bench on which the older man sits, the sculptural group of putti riding a dolphin, the little barking dog up on its hind legs against a small fence. Each of these forms (man, putto, dog) guide the eye back across the canvas in diagonal lines to the sculpted god of love. In turn, the direction of Cupid's gaze leads the viewer once again to the woman on the swing, catching sight of the tossed shoe along the way. Returned to this center point, the eye moves back through the diffuse light to puffs of trees that repeat shapes first formed by the fabric of the swinger's dress. In this natural recess, the eye surveys the foliage, following the curves of branches and leaves in a circular motion. Throughout the image, variations in brushwork and thickness of paint move the viewer back and forth in the fictive, three-dimensional space. The movement of the swing becomes synonymous with the act of viewing. Once the subject matter is registered, the pictorial qualities of the painting urge the viewer to consider the erotic potential of the scene. The female figure sits on a swing, legs parted, the center of attention, an object of desire. Her body and dress are the most carefully built up parts of the composition. The man at her feet is half hidden in an overgrown bush, but his pose, his profile, his eye, all emphasize the importance of looking in the painting. Through his gaze, the viewer is directed toward the mystery of female sexuality and experiences the eroticism of their game. The sexual motifs discussed above confirm this perceived purpose, but not all elements can be so easily interpreted, leaving questions for the viewer. Is the woman on the swing demonstrating her passionate engagement with a lover hidden in the bushes, or is she displaying her fickle nature, going back and forth between the two men? Is the man who pulls the ropes a friend conspiring with the young couple, or is he the woman's duped guardian or cuckolded husband? Does the gesture of Cupid relate to the secrecy of the lovers' relationship and meeting, or does it more generally symbolize the mysteries of love? Is the dog a sign of fidelity, calling his mistress back, or is it a motif of sexual excitement, urging her forward? These various meanings circulated in Fragonard's day, but no one reading is certain for this painting. Even if the represented players are portraits of the patron and his mistress, the image encourages the viewer to guess, to elaborate his or her own anecdote in addition to that of the artist, which is never secure. The idea of the swing excites these fluctuating conclusions: the disoriented viewer slipping back and forth between a variety of suppositions and possibilities. If Fragonard programmed his scene, he did so with areas of open-ended signifiers that elicit both erotic and imaginative responses. Recall that the commission was associated with a petite-maison, a place that intentionally disrupted the rules of propriety to accommodate clandestine liaisons. This space existed for the free expression of erotic behavior uninhibited by the objective world. Similarly, in the swinging game, the player's normal sense of gravity is disrupted to accommodate a desire for disorder, to destabilize the player's control over his or her own body. As the accounts of the swinging women at the Waux-Hall make clear, this play took place at times exclusively for sexual expression usually not permitted. The eroticism of the subject is
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superimposed on the eroticism of the space to suspend propriety indefinitely, to encourage the continuation of private pleasures and freed sexual passions inside the nonobjective worlds of art and erotic love. The aim of swinging is to become intoxicated with motion. As movement does not result from the intellectual labor or concentration of the swinger, play is free, unencumbered by effort. This parallels the process of viewing that Fragonard initiates in Happy Hazards: enjoyment results from the vertiginous composition and the whirling brushstrokes and light that create an altered perception of reality. Viewing is easy rather than labored, and the viewer is stimulated by the illusion. Thus, Fragonard's manner in the context of his subject is as much about playful art making as about eroticism and private pleasures. His amusing representation of a ride on a swing invites the viewer to consider the function and character of amorous and erotic games between the sexes, the physical joys of play outdoors and indoors, stylistic stimulation of the eye, and artistic play with meaning. Fragonard's three depictions of swings are playful because they do not aim to control the viewing process by leading to a single solution. Instead, manner operates to destabilizemeaning through formal disequilibrium,alteringan otherwise stable perception of a familiar scene. They exist as puzzles to be understood-but not solved-through the interactions between artist, image and viewer, an activity that takes on the imaginative, associative character of play, circumventing and complicating immediate legibility. Representing social games within constructions of visual games implies that Fragonard's process was a kind of play with iconographic structures, with form, and with meaning. Artist and viewer become players competing for and collaborating on the production of meanings and the heightening of aesthetic judgment. Play is more than subject matter in the art of Fragonard-it is a stimulating artistic concept that extends to theme, to manner, and to vision. In the final analysis, these images draw the viewer into the interpretive game of art via an engaging visual experience that is akin to a ride on a swing.
NOTES of Sydneyand Partialfundingfor the preparation of this articlewas providedby grantsfromthe University the AustralianResearchCouncil.I would like to thank MaryVidal, LouiseMarshall,and VirginiaSpate for theircommentson earlierversionsof this article,as well as JulianPefanisfor his helpwith translations. 1. SeeJules and Edmondde Goncourt,Fragonard (Paris:E. Dentu, 1865), 16; GeorgesWildenstein, The Paintingsof Fragonard,trans. C. W. Chilton and A. L. Kitson (Londonand New York:Phaidon, Fragonards<Schaukel: Bemerkungen zur Ikonographieder 1960), 13; Hans Wentzel, "Jean-Honore 26 (1964), 210; PierreCabanne,Fragonard Kunst,"Wallraf-Richartz-Jahrbuch Schaukelin derBildenden (Paris:Somogy,1987), 54; Jean-Pierre Life and Work:CompleteCataCuzin,Jean-HonoreFragonard. logue of the Oil Paintings,trans.AnthonyZielonkaandKim-MaiMooney (New York:HarryN. Abrams, Fragonard (New York:The Metropolitan Inc., 1988), 97-8; PierreRosenberg, Museumof Art and Harry N. Abrams,Inc., 1988), 226; andJeanMontagueMassengale, Jean-Honore Fragonard (New York: Harry that delightin the formalaspects N. Abrams,Inc., 1993), 88 and 106. Connectedto these interpretations
of Fragonard's works without delving into their cultural context, Dore Ashton (Fragonard in the Universe of Painting [Washington, D.C. and London: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1988], 11-7) has discussed light as a "central metaphor" and key to meaning in Fragonard's work. She specifically used Happy Hazards to introduce her exploration of this poetic aspect of his art. 2. Donald Posner, "The Swinging Women of Watteau and Fragonard," The Art Bulletin 64 (1982): 7588. Philippe Aries notes that the swing had an iconographic connection with fecundity rites and festivals of youth, which may explain the initial connection made between swinging and eroticism. See Centuries of Childhood. A Social History of Family Life, trans. Robert Baldick (New York: Vintage Books, 1962), 68-9.
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3. An approach that privileges play re-establishes a certain primacy over work that is reminiscent of aristocratic values during the ancien regime. See Domna Stanton, The Aristocrat as Art: A Study of the Honnete Homme and the Dandy in Seventeenth- and Nineteenth-Century French Literature (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1980), 1-12; Mark Motley, Becoming a French Aristocrat: The Education of the Court Nobility 1580-1715 (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1991), 55; Katie Scott, The Rococo Interior: Decoration and Social Spaces in Early Eighteenth-Century Paris (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1995), 133; and Thomas Kavanagh, Enlightenment and the Shadows of Chance: The Novel and the Culture of Gambling in Eighteenth-Century France (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1993), 1-66. 4. Since Johan Christoph Friedrich von Schiller first developed his theory of aesthetic play in the lateeighteenth century, scholars have found connections between art and play. See his discussion of the "play impulse" in the fourteenth and fifteenth letters of Uber die Aesthetische Erziehung des Menschen in einer Reihe von Briefen, eds. Elizabeth Wilkinson and L.A. Willoughby (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967). Most relevant to this study is the parallel inquiry into the concept of authorial play. Useful definitions of literary games between the author and the reader can be found in Mihai Spariosu, Literature, Mimesis and Play: Essays in Literary Theory (Tiibingen: G. Narr Verlag, 1982), 13-52; Peter Hutchinson, Games Authors Play (London and New York: Methuen and Co., 1983); Robert Rawdon Wilson, "In Palamedes' Shadow: Game and Play Concepts Today," Canadian Review of Comparative Literature 12 (1983): 177-99; and Anna Nardo, The Ludic Self in Seventeenth-Century English Literature (Albany: State Univ. of New York Press, 1991), 1-46. For a more recent and interdisciplinary collection of essays exploring the cultural function of play as it relates to mimesis, see The Play of the Self, eds. Ronald Bogue and Mihai Spariosu (Albany: State Univ. of New York Press, 1994). 5. Mary Sheriff, Fragonard: Art and Eroticism (Chicago and London: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1990). 6. For an indication of the widespread significance of visual amusement in eighteenth-century culture, see Barbara Maria Stafford, Artful Science: Enlightenment Entertainment and the Eclipse of Visual Education (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1994), 23-47. 7. "Tout le monde connait I'escarpolette: la notre avait pour appui un vieux pommier sauvage; plusieurs licous de cheval noues ensemble formaient la brandilloire." Nicolas Edme Retif de La Bretonne, Monsieur Nicolas, ed. Pierre Testud (Paris: Gallimard, 1989), 59-60. 8. Roger Caillois, Man, Play and Games (New York: Freeman, 1961). Compare with Brian SuttonSmith, "Notes Towards A Critique of Twentieth-Century Psychological Play Theory" in Homo Ludens: Der spielende Mensch, vol. 2 (Munich and Salzburg: Verlag Emil Katzbichler, 1992), 95-107. SuttonSmith contends that while a society's choice of games discloses little about the nature of play itself, it divulges a great deal about how that society chooses to frame its leisure habits. 9. Philippe de Courcillon, marquis de Dangeau, Journal de la cour de Louis XIV, depuis 1664 jusqu'a 1715 (London: n.p., 1770), 5 July 1691. For more on the swing and its construction, see Divertissements a Marly au temps de Louis XIV, ed. Marie-Amynthe Denis (Louveciennes: Musee-Promenade de MarlyLe-Roi, 1990), 51-2; and Emile Magne, Le Chateau de Marly (Paris: Calmann-Levy, 1934), 132. 10. Another vertigo game, the jeu de bague constructed at the Petit Trianon between 1776 and 1787 illustrates the importance of spectatorship in play within court circles. The amusement was constructed with a gallery that formed a semi-circle around one side with three pavillions built specifically to accommodate spectators. See Annick Heitzmann, "Un Jeu de bague sous l'empire a Trianon," Gazette des Beaux-Arts 111 (1988), 203-5, figs. 3 and 5. 11. The Redoute chinoise was open to the public, but the price of its pleasures was steep, costing 5 livres 16 sous per person, and therefore must have been restricted to the elite bourgeoisie and nobility. Luc-Vincent Thiery, Almanach du voyageur a Paris (Paris: Hardouin, 1784), 290-1. See also Robert Isherwood, Farce and Fantasy: Popular Entertainment in Eighteenth-Century Paris (New York and Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1986), 202-6, note 204. 12. Francois Cognel, La Vie parisienne sous Louis XVI (Paris: Calmann Levy, 1882), 32-3. "les femmes y affectent une tenue plus libre encore qu'ailleurs, et le jeu d'escarpolette permet beaucoup de licences distrayantes pour le spectateur, et qui neanmoins peuvent etre attributes a des causes accidentelles." 13. Retif de La Bretonne, Monsieur Nicolas, 59-60. "les filles et les gargons etaient brandillks tour a tour, mais les premieres eprouvaient quelquefois certains desagrements quand il se trouvait, dans le jeu, des vauriens comme le Grand-Colas, qui cherchaient a les mettre dans des points de vue tris immodestes."
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14. Laurinda Dixon (Perilous Chastity: Women and Illness in Pre-Enlightenment Art and Medicine [Ithaca and London: Cornell Univ. Press], 224-35) provides a more lengthy discussion of eighteenthcentury cures for the vapors based on regulated motion, including swinging, and provocatively suggests a connection between this remedy and the popularity enjoyed by depictions of swings during this period. 15. Joseph Raulin, Traite des affections vaporeuses du sexe, avec l'exposition de leurs symptomes, de leurs differentes causes, et la methode de les guerir (Paris: Jean-Thomas Herissant, 1759), particularly the chapter entitled "Vie sedentaire: cause eloignee des affections vaporeuses," 99-104. See also NicolasToussaint Le Moyne Des Essartz, Traite de l'education corporelle des enfans en bas age, ou riflexions pratiques sur les moyens de procurer une meilleure constitution aux citoyens (Paris:Jean-Thomas Herissant, 1760). 16. Samuel Auguste David Tissot, Gymnastique medicinale et chirurgicale, ou Essai sur l'utilite du mouvement, ou des differens exercices du corps, et du repos dans la cure des maladies (Paris: Bastien, 1780), 39-40. "En un mot, la campagne offre mille delices et une multitude d'objets propres a dissiper, a exercer et a guerir les malades qu'on y envoie." 17. By the mid-eighteenth century, chivalresque exercises had almost completely disappeared as amusements of the nobility. Instead of sports that prepared participants for battle, the leisurely games of the ancien regime groomed players for the art of self-presentation expected at court. Many writers bemoaned this preference: Voltaire complained of the decline of the hunt, "neglected by most of the princes of Europe"; the Abbe de Saint-Pierre blamed the feebleness of his peers on their turning away from even the least violent sports, like la paume and le mail; and Montesquieu remarked that his contemporaries approached exercise with the wrong aims because they looked only for agrements, unlike the ancients for whom all pastimes aimed to improve l'art militaire. Cited in Michel Bouet, Signification du sport (Paris: editions Universitaires, 1968), 306. See also Lucien Clare, "Les Triomphes du corps ou la noblesse dans la paix. La place des exercices physiques dans la vie de l'honnete homme, d'apres L'Idee des spectacles anciens et nouveaux de Michel de Pure (1668)," Histoire, Economie et Societe 3 (1984), 339-80. 18. Tissot, Gymnastique medicinale, 110-1. 19. Denis Diderot and Jean d'Alembert, Encyclopedie, ou Dictionnaire raisonne des sciences, des arts et des metiers. vol. 17, 174 (1765; reprint, Elmsford, NY: Pergamon Press, 1985, 3:1014). "le vertige etant une depravation dans l'exercice de la vision, il faut n&cessairement que les nerfs qui servent a cette fonction soient affect6s par des causes interieures de la meme facon qu'ils le seroient par le mouvement circulaire des objets exterieurs." 20. Posner, "The Swinging Women," 82-8. 21. Posner, "The Swinging Women," 85. 22. The hat and flowers can also be seen as a double reference to female genitalia. According to Pierre Guiraud (Dictionnaire historique, stylistique, rhetorique, etymologique de la litterature erotique [Paris: Payot, 1978]), "Le vagin est un chapeau, une coiffe, une forme, un bonnet enfonce, sur la tate." For more information on the sexual symbolism of the rose in eighteenth-century French art, see Richard Campbell, "The Sacrifice of the Rose by Jean-Honor6 Fragonard: A Late Eighteenth-Century Inflection of a Traditional Erotic Symbol," The Minneapolis Institute of Arts Bulletin 66 (1991): 19-47. 23. Charles Colle, Journal et memoires, 3 vols. (Paris: Firmin Didot freres, fils et cie., 1868), 3:165-6. "Je desirerois ... que vous peignissiez madame (en me montrant sa maitresse) sur une escarpolette qu'un e6vque mettrait en branle. Vous me placerez de faqon, moi, que je sois a port&ede voir les jambes de cette belle enfant, et mieux meme si vous voulez egayer davantage votre tableau, etc." In his memoirs, Colle repeats a discussion he had with the painter G.-E Doyen in October of 1767. According to this account, Doyen refused the proposal and referred the gentleman to Fragonard, but not before he suggested the motif of shoes flying off into the air. 24. Posner, "The Swinging Women," 84-8. 25. A petite-maison was a residence kept to accommodate the clandestine rendezvous, described by Mme de Merteuil in Letter X of Les Liaisons dangereuses as a "temple of love," the propriety of which was "always doubtful." Pierre Ambroise Francois Choderlos de Laclos, Les Liaisons dangereuses in Oeuvres completes, ed. Maurice Allem, 4 vols. (Paris: Gallimard, 1951), 1:30-1. See also Jean-Francois de Bastide, The Little House. An Architectural Seduction, trans. Rodolphe el-Khoury (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1996).
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26. Nicolas Joseph Selis, Lettrea un pere de famille sur les petits spectaclesde Paris (Paris:Garnery, 1789), 41; quotedin Isherwood,Farceand Fantasy,205. 27. Here, I have in mind a similarkind of logic as that describedby Sheriffin relationto The Progress of Love (FrickCollection, New York),where the images coordinatewith the experienceof the place, Fragonard, depicting"possibleovertures to lovemaking" Sheriff, 82. of suchpleasures. andthe recollection According 28. It is often claimedthat the patronwas Baronde Saint-Julien. to the most recentWallace Collectioncatalogue,however,no evidenceexists to supportthis assumption.The associationbegan in that placedHappyHazardsin Saint-Julien's the late-nineteenth centurywith a reference sale catalogueof 1788, but there is no such sale from that year and his othertwo sales do not list this painting. SeeJohn Ingamells,The WallaceCollection(London:ScalaBooks, 1990), 161-5.

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PLAYFUL CONSTRUCTIONS AND FRAGONARD'S SWINGING SCENES

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