Heroic Indolence: Realism and the Politics of Time in Raffaëlli's Absinthe Drinkers
First shown at the sixth Impressionist exhibition in 1881, Jean-Francois Raffaelli's Absinthe Drinkers represents a location, an activity, and a social type—the banlieue, drinking, and the declasse—which, when mixed together, offered a volatile cocktail to its original audience. A detailed historical examination of the social signification of these subjects demonstrates that the core meaning of the work resides in its representation of time. Recuperating a durational pictorial temporality from midcentury Realism, the painting managed to suggest, for certain viewers, a critical alternative to Impressionism and to the intensifying restructuring of the cultural experience of time under modernity.