Lunch Pail Lecture: Modern Nature: France and New Definitions of the Natural, 1860-1900
July 2, 2026
12:00 PM - 1:00 PM
$15 Adult
$15 Senior (65+)
$5 Youth (3-17)
$5 College Student (w/ ID)
Members of The Frick Societies receive complimentary admission
During the second half of the 19th century, France’s literature and visual arts redefined the representation of nature and of the human being. From the previous tradition, the artists of the period retained a few major tropes: the interest in the natural environment and the genres related to it, such as the landscape and the verbal description of places; the representation of the female body, mostly through the genre of the nude and the verbal description of a woman’s appeal for a male character and narrator; the rendering of contemporary life, through the genre of the urban scene or in the sketching of urban dialogues and vignettes. In her presentation, Giuseppina Mecchia will talk about the works of the writer Emile Zola, the famous “naturalist” writer, who talked about the French environment and the reality of women’s lives in a revolutionary way, parallel to the work of his painter friends, especially the painter Gustave Courbet and Edouard Manet.
Advance registration encouraged; walk-up tickets can be purchased in the Grable Visitor Center while space is available. Registration does not include exhibition admission.
About Lunch Pail Lectures
Lunch Pail Lectures are The Frick Pittsburgh’s new monthly lecture series covering topics including current exhibitions, the Frick family, Pittsburgh and more! All attendees are encouraged to enjoy lunch during this program; brown bag lunches are welcome, or order online from The Café at the Frick. Online orders should be placed by 11:00 AM the day of the lecture to ensure pickup by 11:45 AM.
About the Presenter
Giuseppina Mecchia is a modernist working on cultural and political theory, literature and visual media, with a focus on the critique of the capitalist form of social organization in the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries. She has published articles on French philosophers Jacques Rancière and Deleuze and Guattari, and the Italian philosopher Paolo Virno. She has also translated and edited works by Italian political philosophers Paolo Virno and Franco Berardi “Bifo”, as well as Swiss political economist Christian Marazzi. Her work on the politics of the literary form and of cinematic adaptation has examined the novels of Claire de Duras, Stendhal, Marcel Proust, Elsa Morante, Michel Houellebecq, and the cinema of the directors Raoul Ruiz, Michael Haneke, Paolo Sorrentino and Pietro Marcello. Currently, she is writing on the affective and artistic capitalist critique of 19th century French Restauration writers and she keeps focusing the environmental legacy of Jean-Jeacques Rousseau and the French anthropologist Pierre Clastres.
