Broude, Norma. Impressionism: a feminist reading. New York: Rizzoli, 1991.

In this publication Broude has taken full advantage of her feminist lens to scrutinize modern French science. Her text is accessible and reader-friendly and uses poststructuralism without becoming a slave to its theories. Her systematic examination of the field, particularly in "The Gendering of Art, Science, and Nature in the Nineteenth Century," reveals underlying patterns of gender discrimination inherent in traditional French philosophy, which upholds Descartes' "I think, therefore I am." Her examination of the social relations between art and science compels readers to take a harder more skeptical look at the sexual politics of postmodernism, whose theory seems to be rooted within the French Cartesian tradition. Her book should be required reading for anyone interested in art, the feminine principle, and how it is treated in a male-oriented universe. (From Feminist Art Criticism; an annotated bibliography. New York, G.K. Hall, 1993)

Dorival, Bernard. "Ukiyo-e and European Painting." pp. 27-71. In Dialogue in Art; Japan and the West. Tokyo: Kodansha, 1976.

Known in France around 1860, Ukiyo-e prints had an immediate influence on the vision and the craft of painters. First, Theodore Rousseau and Millet and then Whistler, Manet, and mainly Degas were profoundly affected. Asymmetrical compositions, scenes and landscapes represented from above or below, figures shown in close-up, pale palette, flat areas of color, the replacement of Albertian perspective with the system of opposed diagonals: all these innovations were taken up by the Impressionists, particularly Monet, who learned moreover not to reduce the scene he was painting to the limits of the canvas, and absorbed a pantheistic feeling for nature contrary to traditional Western humanism. Japanese graphic art had a continuing influence on French painting from the Post-Impressionists to the Nabis and the Fauves, as well as on the work of Ensor, Munch, Klimt and others. After the Renaissance rediscovery of ancient art, nothing had so influenced European painting as Japanese prints. (From Les Fauves; a sourcebook. Westport, Greenwood Press, 1994)