At the SECAC conference in Pittsburgh, the art historian offered a glimpse into the previously overlooked artist's studio and its celebrated salon events.
Once touted as one of the most renowned and highly-paid women artists in Europe in the years between 1871 and 1914, Madeleine Lemaire has since been demoted to an ancillary role in the history of Marcel Proust’s development. Ringelberg presented an early version of what will become a book-length monograph on the artist, featuring in this case the artist’s salons as sites of queer and non-binary identification–parties that took place in the artist’s studio and thus occupied what might be read as a queer heterotopic space. Ringelberg’s paper, “‘Le succès de ses soirées…dépassait celui de toute autre fête’: Parties as Art in the Salon of Madeleine Lemaire”, focused on contemporaneous descriptions, caricatures, and paintings of the artist’s studio and its inhabitants.