“Des œuvres solides et vivantes qu’il rêvait”: Rethinking Claude Lantier’s Chef d’œuvre

Scholars have recently prioritized how the suppressed Paris Commune haunts the narrative, the characters, and even descriptions of the bloody, dying foods of Les Halles in Zola’s Le Ventre de Paris. This article considers one of those still lifes, Claude Lantier’s self-proclaimed triumph, a reorganisation of his aunt Lisa’s charcuterie display case intended to cause indigestion. Claude is an aesthetic insurgent who denies any social or political significance for his work, but we should not take him at his word. The fictional artist misreads the anxiety that his display produces as its audience’s inability to appreciate modernism. In fact, Claude is the bad viewer. He misses the symbolism of his work, the impact of its visceral appeal, and the socio-political importance of both. This article argues that we should not also overlook these by privileging the formal stakes of Claude’s intervention or its failure as painting. Zola rivals his character in his own representation of violence, nausea, and class war through food. In the novel’s terms, Claude’s display is a genuine success that raises questions about the role and conditions of art-making in the context of clashing Fats and Thins.