@article { , title = {Saints and lovers: myths of the avant-garde in Michel Georges-Michel's Les Montparnos}, abstract = {This article examines Michel Georges-Michel’s 1924 novel Les Montparnos as a study of the myths circulating around the Montparnasse avant-garde of the 1920s, and their function in relation to art. Key amongst these myths is the idea of art as a religion, according to which avant-garde artists are conceived as secular saints and martyrs. While this notion of artist as saint is strongly present in early-twentieth-century biographies of Van Gogh, Georges-Michel explicitly relates his fictionalized version of Modigliani’s life not to such recent models but rather to the Renaissance masters, and especially to Raphael, a link which is explained in terms of the post-war ‘retour à l’ordre’ in French artistic culture. The novel’s references to Raphael as archetypal painter-lover are also related to its construction of a myth of the artist as virile and sexually prolific, and to its identification of creative and sexual impulses.}, doi = {10.1177/0957155811427631}, eissn = {1740-2352}, issn = {0957-1558}, issue = {1}, journal = {French Cultural Studies}, publicationstatus = {Published}, publisher = {SAGE Publications}, url = {https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/708943}, volume = {23}, keyword = {avant-garde, Bohemia, Michel Georges-Michel, Amedeo Modigliani, Montparnasse, myth, Raphael, retour à l’ordre}, year = {2012}, author = {Shingler, Katherine} }