My Manet – Your Manet

Explorations of Edouard Manet's paintings with diagrams

Author: Richard Pieper Page 2 of 3

Hi, after a career as a sociologist, I now follow my interests in art, own painting, and visualization of my ideas in diagrams - thanks to Edouard Manet my lifelong companion.

More on Manet’s Enigma – Breakfast in the Atelier (P19)

By

On October 8, 2021

In Edouard Manet

Manet’s Breakfast in the Atelier is still fascinating me – and I got hold of another source with new insights.
So, The Balcony – which I planned for today – must wait until next time.

In the previous post on the “Enigma” of Breakfast, I distinguished between a content level and a design level. There are, obviously, many more levels of interpretation.

To acknowledge the complexity of this painting, I should complement the view of MyManet with additional levels or layers of meaning.

Figure 1:  The viewer’s gaze moving over the Breakfast in the Atelier  (1868)

Some layers are more connected to the design of the painting – the order of elements.
In Figure 1, I tried to indicate how Manet is directing the viewer’s gaze over the picture space – at least my gaze.
The gaze of other viewers may roam differently, but I think my reaction is not totally missing what Manet intended.

I return to Figure 1 shortly.

Some layers are created by the content associated with the figures and requisites shown.
Presumably, there are “hidden” meanings “betrayed” by what is depicted, such as an allegory of painting or an underlying “family drama”.

Let us return to Figure 1 and look at the design:

The painting is troubling for the viewer showing a lot of figures and things which seem to be quite arbitrarily assembled.
But there is some order – not the least by the way the viewer will try to “read” the painting (and Manet will lead the viewing):

Obviously, the boy on frontstage is capturing the viewer’s gaze first.
However, the boy is ignoring the viewer. This is not very polite and, additionally, he is almost stepping out of the painting violating the personal space of the viewer.
So, we might step back, and – in a second attempt – turn to the maid in the background.
After all, she is looking at us returning our gaze. We are invited to come closer again, but there still is that boy with that dominating black jacket. Avoiding his presence, we might step back again and look to the right to the brightly illuminated table with the breakfast. Instinctively, we step closer, since the lemon is almost dropping from the table – we have to catch it!
This way, we approach the man looking to the left side of the painting.

So, stepping back again – and easing our way around the boy – we look also to the left side.
Here the white flowerpot with its – somewhat “out of place” Japanese decoration – catches our attention. It is way in the background, but we don’t step closer because it is somehow looming large (“facing” us) keeping us at bay.
Trying to bridge the void in the middle ground, we focus on the still life on frontstage, and we are amazed and puzzled by this theatrical arrangement ad odds with the Japanese flowerpot.
Are we in an atelier or at a breakfast table?
Then, we discover the black cat – and we realize we are looking at a painting by Manet, the painter with the black cat!

O.K., now we know that this must be an allegory of Manet reflecting on painting.
Knowing that he loves citing painting traditions and his own works, we start the “treasure hunt” of the art historian, and we will find a lot of elements referring back to other paintings.

One of the observations I like very much is offered by Richardson (1982):
Behind the back of the boy, there is a diagonal connecting the Dutch looking maid and the still life in the Dutch tradition on the table (also citing an own painting). There is another diagonal leading from the romantic smoker (Richardson) to the assemble of theatrical requisites on the front left (again citing own still lives and the puppet theatre).
Richardson also points out that this retrospective painting is produced when Manet recovered from a period of “self-doubt and gloom” (p. 17). This explains the self-reflection in the painting.

Our view of the painting moved from a first, somewhat disoriented, impression of complexity (level 1) to reading more and more order into it – following the way our gaze is directed (level 2) – and, then, associating the meaning of elements with Manet’s work (level 3).
We also experienced – if you followed my experience – that not only roamed our eyes over the picture space. The eye movements even induced a “dance” stepping back and forth and sideways trying to engage with different elements.
A great example for how Manet is engaging the viewer!

On yet another level, the view of MyManet suggests seeing the painting as a variation on Manet’s scheme. This was the theme of the previous Post 18.

This level, I like to enrich with two insights gained from my new source, “moments of thought” which Werner Hofmann (1985) devoted to Breakfast in the Atelier.

First, Hofmann shows an x-ray of the painting which indicates some interesting changes made after the first draft.
Most commentators point out that the scene originally played out at his summer resort at the sea in an atelier with large windows in the background. Returned from the resort, Manet closed this background with a wall and with a painting (to the right) creating a more domestic ambience. This domestic flair is further supported by introducing the maid in the final version who may be serving some milk (in a can bearing the letter “M”).
More important in view of MyManet, with her, the role and position of the First looking at the viewer is entering the painting. Back home in Paris, we might say, he re-conceived the painting in terms of his scheme!

Another important change occurs to the smoker to the right.
In the draft, he is looking more at the back of the boy (and along the diagonal toward the weapon still life). Now his hand is moved somewhat between him and the boy and his gaze is directed across the middle ground to the left.
With the introduction of the First, the maid, in the background, and with the Third, the boy in the foreground, Manet now covers the middle ground with the gaze of the Second, the smoker.
These changes enhance the “dance” of figures over the “stage” and make the viewer “dance” in response!

Second, another observation by Hofmann concerns the gaze of the boy.

This insight, I like to relate to the interpretation of Nancy Locke (2001). She chooses a psychological reading of the painting starting with the fact that Leon is the illegitimate son of Manet (or of Manet’s father?). According to her, there is a “tone of estrangement” (p.131) in the painting. This estrangement gains momentum when we identify the man to the right with Manet himself and the maid with the mother, Suzanne, a Dutch woman! Then the boy will turn his back to a situation of illegitimate childhood and look into a yet indeterminate future adulthood.

This is certainly an own and important layer in the interpretation. She adds another layer by pointing out that Manet had himself a very problematic relationship to his father. Only after his father’s death in 1862, Manet – somehow liberated – had his breakthrough in painting. In this view, we might even see Manet’s parents looming behind the vision of Manet and Suzanne as suggested on the previous layer.
Locke is exploiting here the theme of the father-son relationship and its psychoanalytic significance.

And Locke takes still another turn with the theme of father-son relations. She connects the Breakfast with Manet’s religious paintings. According to her, Manet’s paintings of Christ are variations on his relation to his father: “Manet paints a gaze that expresses the difficulty of accepting the will of the Father” (p. 139).

In view of MyManet, this is a very interesting way of interpreting the gaze of the Third!
We suggested a similar interpretation for the gaze of Christ – the role of the Third – in Christ Mocked by Soldiers (see Post 14).

Locke proposes a psychological interpretation of the Third. She somewhat abruptly changes between paintings – from Breakfast to Christ Mocked, from Leon as Third looking at his “father” to Christ as Third looking at his “Father”. Leon is not looking at his “father” at the breakfast table, unless we follow the interpretation of Gisela Hopp (1968). She sees the boy daydreaming and imagining the very scene pictured behind him.
So, the connection is the more general theme of the internal conflicts of a father-son relation and the role of the “father” as an internalized authority.

Figure2:  From “looking out” to “looking without seeing”
– Manet’s portraits of Leon and the “iconic barmaid”

Hofmann offers an interpretation which is less psychological and more rooted in the tradition of religious painting.
With the loss of religious convictions, the gaze toward a meaningful agent beyond all sensory experiences loses its “transcendental axis” (p.79). The gaze of “looking without seeing” does not express security in faith anymore but alienation and individual isolation. Hofmann sketches this development  since the 15th century with some fascinating examples. With the loss of the (religious) narrative, the figures become “icons” of the human condition in modern society.

In Figure 2, we can see how Manet in his own work changes the view on Leon from the child posing in a “Spanish” painting to the realistic view of him in the drawing. Then – in Breakfast – we see the “turn to the icon” (Hofmann). The boy is not just depicted like we “see” him but shown as an “icon” representing how it is to “exist” in the situation of a boy on the threshold to adulthood.
To highlight his point, I have added the famous “icon” of Manet’s “looking without seeing” – the barmaid in his A Bar at the Folies-Bergère (1882).

In view of MyManet, I like this interpretation of Manet’s figures as “icons” of the human condition. It is a meaningful way of capturing Manet’s scheme as a “social form” assigning roles and positions. The Third “looking without seeing” is not focusing attention on “what one sees” but experiencing “what exists” (see Post 10 on Manet’s realism). Following Locke (and Sigmund Freud), we can agree that the realities of psychological conflicts in family relations are also exactly that: existing realities.

However, we have to come back in a later post to the social dimension of the scheme.
For Manet, the human condition was not so clearly characterized by individualism and isolation as Hofmann and later expressionistic and existentialist visions of modernity would see it.
Manet still believed in tradition and institutions – submitting his paintings to the official Salon – and he infused his figures with the energy of a social existence and awareness (see previous post) that united them beyond their individual subjectivity.

Last comment: With all those reflections on the father-son relation, we seem to have lost the female perspective. In Breakfast, the female plays only an “assistive” role (Hofmann) in the background and is painted rather undefined.
That changes clearly in the next painting! In The Balcony, females are frontstage.

See you in two weeks!

Manet’s Enigma – Breakfast in the Atelier (P18)

By

On September 25, 2021

In Edouard Manet

Most commentators agree, including the first reactions of critics in the Salon 1869: Breakfast in the Atelier (1968) is perhaps his most enigmatic painting.
It is puzzling to understand what is going on in the scene.
Already the changing titles of the painting in different sources reflect that we cannot even be sure if this scene is before or after a breakfast or  rather a luncheon than a breakfast, taking place in a studio or at Manet’s home. We use the title above especially to distinguish it from the Luncheon on the Grass.
Manet submitted it together with The Balcony which left the visitors equally puzzled.

Figure 1:  Breakfast in the Atelier (1968)       and       The Balcony (1968)

For the contemporary critic Castagnary, both paintings were arrangements “without reason or meaning”; for him, recording the appearances of modern life was not enough.
Manet demonstrated too much “fantasy” and too little “sincerity” and traditional finish (Hanson 1977, p. 30).

Looking at the two paintings next to each other (Figure 1), I find it especially astonishing how different the paintings are in their style and composition although Manet created them in the same year.

Michael Fried (1998) pointed out that the two paintings show a return to the multi-figure paintings after a “Spanish phase” with single-figure paintings following Manet’s travel to Spain.
Here he tried to recover from the harsh criticisms of Luncheon and Olympia by getting new inspirations from his admired Diego Velazquez.

As the art historian James Rubin (2010) suggests, the two paintings document a transition in Manet:
– from Charles Baudelaire to Berthe Morisot;
– from the romantic and naturalistic novelist who died the year before in 1967 to the young impressionist painter whom Manet first met in the summer of 1968.
Both were very close friends but had a very different influence on Manet.
Well, one was an old male friend deserving a memory in the most Baudelairian painting (Rubin), and the other a charming young lady who turned out to be one of the most important members of the impressionist movement.
Quite a transition of friendships!

Since the two paintings were presented in the same Salon exhibition in 1869, they are often compared.
But the first is somehow looking back to paintings in the Spanish and Dutch tradition, the second is moving forward integrating impressionist influences.
So, it is not surprising that The Balcony is getting usually more attention and is seen easier to understand as testifying to Manet’s modernity.

In view of MyManet, this is not doing full justice to either painting, because there is a focus on the differences marked by the transition, while the common aspects are neglected.
Both paintings – as the reactions confirm – are riddled:
– by the interpretation of the gazes and the (lack of) emotions shown by the figures, and
– by the logic of the composition.
In fact, the divergent gazes seem to seriously disrupt or endanger the composition.

In view of MyManet, let us consider both aspects.
In this post, we take a closer look at Breakfast, in the next post at The Balcony.

Developing Manet’s scheme in the previous posts, we have seen already how Manet varies the application of the scheme shifting the emphasis between the roles of the figures (First, Second, Third, Other, Big Other) and their position in the picture space (frontstage, middle ground, background, backstage).
In some cases, he might substitute a position by another figure (e.g. the cat for the Third in Olympia).
In some cases, he might omit a position, but implicate it by other means (e.g. omitting the “Other” by closing up the backstage in Olympia).
Additionally, basic emotions are indicated by gestures and postures depending on their relations to each other, to “unrepresented” agents outside the painting, or to the viewer (e.g. the empowered and defiant gaze of Olympia toward the viewer).

Breakfast in the Atelier shows – in this perspective – another variation of Manet’s scheme!

To start, let us look at the dominating  figure of the boy (or young man) standing right in front of us (the viewer).
The undetermined age of the fellow gives rise to interpretations that we observe the transitional state of Leon (the model and Manet’s son) between childhood and adulthood.
The gaze of Leon is directed somewhat to the right of the viewer, not looking at the viewer or anything else specifically. He might be contemplating his future as an adult.
Gisela Hopp (1968) suggests that the painting itself shows a kind of dream world, so the boy may be looking at this dream presented to the viewer in the atelier behind him.

Hanson (1973) discusses the painting in her chapter on Manet’s “still lives”, since the boy seems to stand in an arrangement of “still lives”: the weapons in the left forefront, the breakfast on the table (if, indeed, it is a breakfast), and the flower in the left background.
Actually, the figures are also quite “still”: the maid holding the coffee pot, the man peacefully smoking, and the boy holding on to the table without any signs of intention to go anywhere.

The whole painting has a nostalgic or retrospective atmosphere, and as Hanson notes, it invites psychological interpretations: some reference to an underlying or hidden “drama” which the unfocused gazes are “hiding” and all those requisites are “betraying”.
And as Richard Wollheim (1987) has pointed out, this “drama” is not an effect of the portrayal of individual characters. The figures have presence and energy, but no clear personality or motivations to act, whether alone or together (see also Post 2 and his comparison with Edgar Degas).
Still, art historians like Wollheim (and Nancy Locke , among others) have tried to uncover a deeper psychological layer – a personal or family drama – by exploiting, for instance:
– the similarity of the Dutch looking maid with Manet’s Dutch wife Suzanne,
withdrawn in the background,
– the signature “M” on her coffee pot,
– the similarity of the man to the right with Manet himself,
not paying attention to the other figures, and
– the fact that the boy is modelled by their son Leon,
looking out of the painting into his own future.

These interpretations provide interesting contexts, although they do – in my view – not reckon enough with Manet’s inclination to stage an ironic and self-reflexive “theatre”,
and with his sincerity as a painter in designing the scene.
So, I like to pursue another suggestion about the meaning of the gazes in the painting offered by Charles Stuckley    (cited in Fried 1998, p.592 in a footnote fn 205).

Stuckley argues that what realist painters like Manet “truthfully reveal are the necessarily artificial underpinnings of the activity of painting per se.” These underpinnings are the reality of the model’s work in the setting of the atelier. Stuckley suggests – in Fried’s words – “that the strangeness of Manet’s Breakfast in the Atelier was the work of Manet’s models, not the painter himself”. And citing Stuckley:
“As if irked by their model’s roles, Manet’s sitters seem to sabotage his efforts at Realism, for they refuse to remove their hats and they leave the table at which the artist had presumably instructed them to remain for as long as it took to complete the picture. Resigned to their lack of cooperation, Manet’s only option was to record people unwilling to hide their genuine impatience with a slow painter.”
(Fried wonders if Stuckley means this humorously, but I think he makes a serious point humorously.)

This imagery of models – coming to the setting of the painting process like to the set of a theatre performance – is also vividly described by Carol Armstrong (1998). In her case the setting is the Luncheon on the Grass, and she also sees Manet purposefully keeping the artificial and theatrical appearance of the scene alive in the painting. The models in her imagery are very cooperative. Nevertheless, their actual behaviour in the setting is reflected in the painting to enhance its Realism – not to “sabotage” it (Stuckley).

Models should – in Manet’s view – act and pose as natural as possible, that is like in everyday life. This is also reported in an often-cited anecdote from Manet’s time of studying in the studio of Thomas Couture. Here Manet is angry with a model striking a classical pose, and he ask him whether he would behave like that when buying his groceries down the street.

I suggest combining this imagery of somewhat detached models with another imagery evoked by the description of performance training in a practical guide for teachers, dancers, and actors.
The authors, Anne Bogart and Tina Landau, describe their method in “The Viewpoints Book” (2005), a method developed in close interaction with postmodern painting and postdramatic theatre in the 1960ies.

Like Manet’s models, a group of dancers or actors enters the stage. Then they are asked to focus their awareness as much as possible on the immediate situation and their position in relation to the other persons on stage.
They are asked not to focus on the others, but rather to keep them in “soft focus”, i.e. in their peripheral vision and in their perceptual and bodily awareness of each other including all the senses.
In this state of “soft focusing” on the “between” of their relations in space and time and embedded in the architectural setting of the stage, they are then instructed to move in different patterns. They are asked to take their impulse to move or to shape their body from the others rather than from their own impulses.
Obviously, it takes training to create in this way coordinated and harmonized group movements on stage.
It is, actually, quite astounding that it works at all! (Visit the examples on Youtube!)

Now imagine Manet’s models taking their places under the guidance of the painter in this spirit.
They got a general introduction into the theme (e.g. scene after a breakfast) but no great “story”. They are assigned their position, but they have to find a posture, gaze, and gesture with which they are comfortable. They know that they have to keep the pose for a while to allow for the painting process.
But as long as their relations are harmonized by their mutual awareness of each other, Manet is not intervening.
This way the models have a certain freedom to “interpret” their gaze, role, and position.

As Struckley correctly observes, this exactly allows for the realism of the scene, and this is what Manet wants to paint!
It is also clear that with a “soft focus” on their relations rather than on their individual mental states and emotions the models will not “strike a pose and keep it” but adjust within a frame of relations with all others.
Their pose will appear somehow “arrested” – if you are looking for “meaningful” activities – but not lifeless!
I think, Stuckley is wrong when seeing “genuine impatience” in their faces and postures, there is something relaxed but intensive about them.

The authors of “Viewpoints” use the metaphor of an act of shooting an arrow with a bow to a target.
The most intensity rests in the moment when the arrow is pulled back, the bow is under pressure, the whole body of the shooter is lining up with the target, but the arrow is not yet released.
The eventual act of releasing and shooting might carry most of the purposeful meaning, but this moment displays the potential energy.

Now looking at Breakfast with this imagery in mind, the three figures show a presence and energy which flows from their awareness of the presence of the others, including the viewer/painter, without directly gazing at them.
This is the reality Manet tries to capture!

To be able to achieve this, Manet is relying on models with whom he has personal and trusting relationships and who engage with his practice – family, friends, or models like Victorine Meurent.
This may also be a reason why Manet preferred multi-figure compositions to portraits, because in this case he himself has to perform in the double role of the “Other” and the painter.
And, obviously, that becomes especially complicated when the person portrayed is an adorable woman like Berthe Morisot…

Certainly, the models cannot just do what they please.
Manet is communicating with them to create the situation he wants – there is a programmatic dimension in the arrangement, and everybody has to take their position and role.
And in each modelling session his vision has to be communicated again, most likely with some changes.
After all, Manet is likely to have scraped off the sketch from the last session – as his models report – and for a reason!
In view of MyManet, an important part of this programmatic dimension is Manet’s scheme.

In Breakfast, Leon has to take the position and role of the Third in the scheme, as I show below.
This implies that his posture cannot be simply “natural”.
In Figure 2, we confront the painting with a sketch of the boy from the same year in preparation of the painting:

Figure 2: Breakfast in the Atelier     and    Drawing of Leon   (both 1868)

The sketch demonstrates that Manet is perfectly able to make a lively and “naturalistic” drawing of his son.
But in the painting, he is asked to take his hands out of the pockets and to look out of the painting. He also has to lean slightly back to rest on the table connecting with the man behind him resting his elbow on the same table, while the maid is arresting her approaching them.

The energy of dancers with a “soft focus” on their spatial relations to the others permeates the atelier!
This is less than the dynamics of a “good story” or a “family drama” but capturing the reality before Manet’s eyes.

This brings us to the second riddle of Breakfast, the logic of its composition.

Comments on the painting agree that the painting shows an arrangement of somewhat arbitrary figures and other elements in a rather strict composition. The elements seem all related to Manet’s biography and previous paintings, but the logic of their composition appears non-transparent.
Lüthy describes it as “situative incoherence” bound by a “planimetric order” (2003, p.35).
It is as if Manet is taming the diverging forces on the social content level – produced for the viewer by the uncoordinated gazes and the unrelated meanings of the requisites (still lives) – by a compositional order.
This order creates a unity for the viewer on the design level of shapes, colours, and spatial relations. Lüthy sees the logic of the composition in these dynamics of incoherence and order between the elements of the picture and the relationship to the viewer.
In view of MyManet, these dynamics capture an important aspect of the composition. However, there is more structure in the dynamics as the opposition of inner “incoherence” and stabilizing order for the viewer suggests.

Above, I have already argued that the inner “incoherence” might better be understood as “unfocused” unity created by the figures being aware of each other. This compositional unity is supported by the hidden order of Manet’s scheme: the figures have a position and are aware of their roles.

This hidden order becomes apparent when we apply the scheme to the painting as in Figure 3:

Figure 3:     Manet’s scheme applied to The Breakfast in the Atelier (1968)

The most striking variation in the scheme is clearly that Leon in the position of the Third is moved onto the frontstage.
This creates a dominant position and role for him. We have indicated already that interpretations see the boy looking “at his future”, his future role in society. In view of the daring position he occupies almost encroaching onto the viewer and breaking the “fourth wall” separating the stage from the audience, we should interpret his role also as challenging painterly traditions of composition.

Comparing the position of the boy as the Third with the positioning of Christ as the Third in Christ Mocked by Soldiers, we see how dramatically the Third is moved against all rules to the front (see Post 14).
Thus, the boy’s gaze is directed at the Big Other in Manet’s scheme.

The maid is taking the position of First engaging the viewer.
However, she is doing that from a position in the background. Nancy Locke (2001, p.130) rightly observes that the triangle of the Luncheon – with the nude (First) in front and the man (Third) behind her – is here reversed.
This position provides some depth to the triad, although the effect is more to push the Third even more to the front, since behind her is only the wall (or painted coulisse) sealing off the back. (In an earlier draft, there was a larger window behind the triad which Manet has painted over hanging a small painting on the dark wall.)

The Second, the man to the right, also shows a striking variation of the scheme.
He is moved far to the right, even cut off by the frame. From this position, he is looking not at the others but straight across the picture space to the left. He is focusing on nothing in particular, may be even lost in his own thoughts.
But he is establishing the middle ground of the painting – occupied by him and the table – as an own layer between the boy in the foreground and the maid in the background.

This distinct distribution of the three figures over three different layers of the painting must have been an essential element in Manet’s experiment with the scheme!

The dominant role of the figure frontstage must have been a compositional challenge which Manet balanced with a prominent still life in the front:
the theatrical arrangement of weapons and, again, the black cat, his signature animal from the Olympia (orange circle). Additionally, he lets the bright yellow lemon almost drop from the table to the right (orange circle).
So, this scene of the “puppet theatre” is clearly talking to the audience from the frontstage.

Finally, the white flowerpot to the left plays an interesting role in the composition.
On the one hand, it is placed somewhat behind the figure of the maid; on the other hand, it is painted surprisingly bright and colourful, even with Japanese motifs. It is pushing forward from the back – and in this feature – the pot is reminding of the second woman in Luncheon on the Grass looking from the back! The pot is also somehow “too large”, not a face but clearly “facing” the scene and the viewer.
Indirectly, it is accentuating the void space between the pot and the weapons supporting the independence of the middle ground across the composition.
Thus, we may see the position and role of the “Other” taken by a flowerpot!

We see an inversion of the scheme from Luncheon on the Grass and, as I would like to show in the next post, the painting The Balcony is displaying yet another variation of the scheme!

See you in two weeks again!

On Painting a Modern Nude – Manet’s Olympia (P17)

By

On September 9, 2021

In Edouard Manet

Olympia is certainly one of the most reproduced and discussed paintings in Western art.  Together with Luncheon on the Grass it is considered to be a “founding monument” of modern art (T.J. Clark). However in direct comparison their evaluation is somewhat controversial. Between the two paintings, the opinions of art historians are divided as to which painting deserves a higher ranking as “founding monument”.

Figure 1 :    Olympia by Manet (1863)

                 and  Venus of Urbino  by Titian (1538)

While Luncheon is seen by the art historian Niels Sandblad as “troubled” in conception and painting lacking the “greatness of the self-evident”, Olympia becomes the “definitive work” which Manet clearly wanted to achieve (1954, p.94).
Picasso, on the other hand, found Luncheon so inspiring that he devoted over 200 works to it, more than to any other painting of another painter (Wollheim 1987, p.243-48).

Manet’s Olympia is inspired by another painter like most of his early works, in this case by Titian’s Venus of Urbino (1538). He made two copies of Titian’s Venus while he was on a study trip to Italy.
The resemblance of the two paintings is quite obvious (Figure 1) and has been commented at length by countless critics.
An interesting difference is that

– Titian used a courtesan as a model but painted her as a nude wife in her home environment, presumably looking lovingly at her husband, with her hand resting on her pubic area rather innocently, and exerting a subdued eroticism, while

– Manet used a model posing as a courtesan apparently looking at her customer with her hand covering her genitals in a way that rather enhanced the sexuality of her naked body.

The problem is that the critics and the public expected an idealized nude with a “story” justifying her presented beauty, while Manet showed a contemporary woman which reminded the viewer pretty much of photographs of naked women available in Paris at the time.

As Clark has argued, the scandal exploded especially, because Manet made it not sufficiently clear whether the viewer was looking at a – somewhat acceptable – courtesan of the bourgeois high-society or at a disreputable lower-class prostitute. Actually, there was no accepted way that a respectable contemporary woman could present herself in the nude in a painting. The model had to be from the lower class, only posing as a courtesan and the credibility depended on a “story” making her posing respectable as art.

Manet, however, did not provide the alibi-story, and, worse, lacking the story motivating her gaze, the direct gaze seemed to be produced by the lower-class model herself confronting the viewer. As Clark notes, the scandal was all about class identity, not about Olympia looking straight at the viewer – like other nudes in the exhibition. Her look is “not the simple, embodied gaze of the nude”. She “looks out at the viewer in a way which obliges him to imagine a whole fabric of sociality in which this look might make sense and include him – a fabric of offers, places, payments, particular powers, and status which is still open to negotiation” (1984, p. 133; emphasis added).

Thus, Olympia raised issues of the relation between prostitution and modern class society (”the price of modernity”) and of the precarious position of women inside and outside the respected role of a married wife. Women depended in their social status on men and found themselves always balancing their sexuality between asserting their integrity and independence or commercializing their “assets” in forms of prostitution.

This societal context of Olympia in Paris around the 1860ies has been described extensively, often inspired  by Marx (e.g. T.J. Clark) and complemented with analyses inspired by feminism (e.g. Carol Armstrong 1998,  Nancy Locke 1998, Anne McCauley 1998, and Linda Nochlin 2019).
These approaches are interesting and illuminating, but in MyManet, I would like to pursue two own questions:

  1. Why did Manet in painting a modern nude take up the issue of prostitution in this explicit way by depicting a courtesan?

and

  1. How does Manet’s scheme relate to Olympia – if at all?

Considering the first question:
We might point out that Manet was well aware of the social problem and political debate on prostitution and the role of women, also discussing it presumably with his friend Charles Baudelaire. Following Rubin (2010), Olympia is the most Baudelairian painting among Manet’s work. But this perspective leads us back to the societal context.

I find a remark by Clark quite interesting that Olympia has “two faces”, a face characterized by “hardness” and a “closed look of its mouth and eyes” and a face “opening out into hair let down” over her left shoulder (p. 137). The first is “close to the classic face of the nude”, the second seems to indicate the model herself as a person, “it is her look, her action upon us, her composition of herself” (p. 133). Both faces are placed by Clark into a “taxonomy of woman” (p. 137), moving again to the level of social and cultural classification of women.

I would like to stay for a moment in the concrete situation of the atelier with Manet and his model Victorine. As said before, the concrete situation of the atelier is the reference frame for Manet’s realism – that’s where the (painting) action is!

Olympia is painted by Manet parallel to Luncheon on the Grass and finished somewhat later.
The early drafts of Olympia around 1862 do not show the “hardness” observed by Clark.
The face is smiling rather sympathetically, and the hand is not always demonstratively covering the pubic area. It is tempting to suggest that the self-asserting gaze of Olympia entered the painting under the impression of the reactions to the Luncheon on the Grass.

After all, Manet and – we should expect – Victorine Meurent were shocked by the interpretation of the woman in the Luncheon as a prostitute having fun with a couple of young students. While Victorine certainly was participating in the “loose” Bohemian lifestyle of artists, no art historian has claimed that she was a prostitute in Clark’s sense. And we have every reason to assume that Manet was not seeing her as a prostitute modelling for him, nor was Victorine seeing herself as one!

In fact, Manet is credited generally with a deep respect for all the women he painted including clearly lower-class street singers or waitresses in the bar.
The explicitness of the presentation of a courtesan with all the accessories identified by art historians (e.g. the black cat, the coloured maid with flowers of a customer) may be, in part, motivated by reactions of the artist and his model to the derogative reception of Luncheon.

Manet is confronted in the reality of the painting situation with “two faces”:
– he is “seeing” the model impersonating a nude courtesan ironically citing the painting of Titian
and
– he is recognizing that there “exists” in front of him a woman challenging and resisting the implications of “being seen” as a prostitute.

The first “face” is troubled by the problems of painting a contemporary nude courtesan:
Directing her gaze at the viewer, she engages him in the “fabric of sociality” implied by prostitution, destroys the art conventions of painting a nude and arouses a public scandal.
The second “face” looks at Manet himself – the “fabric of sociality” is here the situation of painting – with Victorine reminding him defiantly that she is involved in a power game with the viewer, if not with Manet.

The point is that Manet depicts this power game on both levels – societal and situational – at the same time:
By violating the conventional strategies of idealization of female nude beauty and presenting her realistically, he allows Victorine to express her challenge of social norms in a direct personal confrontation with the viewer. He deliberately places her high on the bed looking down on the viewer, while Titian had the loving wife looking up to her husband.
The fact that Manet identifies the painted courtesan as a contemporary living woman must have motivated Victorine even more to her gaze.
Thus, Olympia is a perfect example of Manet’s realism painting with self-awareness and self-reflection what he “sees” and what “exists” in the social situation of painting.

This reflection on the power games leads back to the second question:
How does Olympia relate to Manet’s scheme?

As a reminder, the scheme is proposed as a generic template which is realized – with variations – in other paintings. Especially since Olympia is produced in close connection with the Luncheon, we should expect some formal relationship to the scheme, not only the content relation due to Manet’s ( and possibly Victorine’s) reaction to the interpretation of Luncheon as involving prostitution.

The relation is certainly more complicated than in the case of Christ Mocked by Soldiers (see Post 14):

First, there is the question of the number of persons or positions in the painting:
Can the gazes and gestures of two people effectively instantiate the scheme?
Lüthy (2003) sees only two persons depicted, which constitutes for him a favourable reduction of the complexity of the viewer–painting relation (in 3-4 person scenarios), a relation which he considers central for the interpretation of all multi-person paintings of Manet.
In view of MyManet, the abstract viewer-painting relation (inspired by the subject-object relation of Hegel) is not differentiated enough to capture the social space of painting.
We want to identify more positions inside and outside the painting, more “polyperspectivity” (Lüthy). Notably, Lüthy is not discussing the role of the cat in the composition – an important actor, as we will suggest below.

Second, there is a problem created by the dominant gaze of Olympia.
It tends to reduce all other elements to decorative functions – like in a portrait. Her gaze is not an invitation to enter the scene but a confrontation challenging the approaching viewer. It takes some reflection on part of the viewer to become aware of the multi-layered power game described above and to see more than “she” versus “me”.
This narrowing of perspective is an effect of power games!

The hesitating and deferring gesture of the maid offering the flowers is a revealing indication of the on-going power game. The maid is almost retreating behind the flowers, as it were, and all but merging with the dark background. (Manet might have chosen a coloured person as maid to enhance this effect.) It is only by moving Olympia’s face far to the left and dividing the scene by a vertical line that the maid gains sufficient independence as an actor in this game.

Third, the cat becomes an important player in the game!
Interestingly, contemporary caricaturists like Cham and Bertall (Figure 2) acknowledge the importance of the cat more than many art critics.

Figure 2:  Caricatures of Olympia by Cham  and   Bertall  (1865)

Manet clearly felt the need to introduce a counterweight to the dominant outward-gaze. But unlike Olympia’s gaze, the gaze of the cat is not so evidently focused on a single viewer in front of the painting – a fact also recognized by the caricaturists. The cat’s gaze is more starring at the public out there, and in Cham’s graphic is even scared by the reactions of the public.

The cat represents the position of the Third!
Her gaze places the bilateral confrontation of Olympia with the viewer (and the painter) into the wider context of public reactions and institutions.

As noted by Rubin (p. 88), the cat is not only an erotic symbol – fitting into the discourse on prostitution in most interpretations – but also a symbol of freedom – fitting into the role of the cat in the power game in view of MyManet.
Rubin (p. 95) recognizes that Manet’s interest is “far more socio-psychological than erotic” and “focused on the woman’s power over her commercial transaction”. Manet underlines his intentions by avoiding “seductive use of paint”, since a dominant marketing attitude of the courtesan would suggest enhancing seductive beauty, while in a power game we oppose exactly the “commodification” of our own self (p. 96).

So far, we have identified the elements of Manet’s scheme as shown in Figure 3:

The triad of “First”, “Second” and “Third” is represented by Olympia, the maid and the cat engaging the viewer in front of the painting. As noted above, we should also include the “second face” of the model “behind” the courtesan which communicates especially with Manet, the artist.
The scheme also shows the rather flat “stage” which Manet typically uses to push the scene toward the viewer. The background – the coulisse of the “puppet theatre” – is closed by curtains and the frontstage is minimalized by the drapery hanging over the edge of the raised bed (the “still life” in the scheme).

Figure 3:  Olympia represented in Manet’s scheme – a first version

Figure 3 makes aware – perhaps more than any words could – of a central focus of the composition, namely, the hand covering defiantly the pubic area for the viewer.
The move has clearly a meaning in the power game, although critics usually propose some erotic or even psychoanalytic meaning. But I agree with Rubin that the main game played by Olympia (and Manet) is about dominance and defiance rather than erotic.
With Rubin, I would also emphasize the importance of the hand in Manet’s paintings. In Post 14, we have seen that in the case of Dead Christ with Angels the hands can play the role of persons or positions in the scheme. In the centre of Luncheon, the hand of the man to the right (“Second”) mediates – with the pointing finger and the up-raised thumb –  between the triad in the middle ground and the woman (“Other”) in the background.

Thus, the hand suggests that another person might be allowed to “see” what is hidden from the viewer.
This position or alternative perspective is “The Other” in Manet’s scheme!

Figure 4:   Olympia represented in Manet’s scheme

In Figure 4, this virtual “Other” is introduced looking from the back. Additionally, Figure 4 slightly modifies the role of the cat with her gaze now directed toward the institutional “Big Other” of the scheme.
Again, I think the graphical representation supports this role of the cat more than words could, opening another dimension or perspective in Olympia.

To sum up this analysis of Olympia let us return to the evaluation by Sandblad in the beginning.
Olympia – this was his evaluation – is the “definite work” Manet wanted to achieve, at least in this phase of his development. Sandblad reaches this conclusion, because he sees Manet achieving a synthesis of “Japonism”, the fashionable influence of Japanese woodcuts, with the French, Spanish and Dutch art tradition. This interpretation relies heavily on the decorative and unifying qualities of contemporary Japanese art adapted by Manet to his own style. For Sandblad, it also means that Manet is anticipating the Symbolism of e.g. Paul Gaugin and actually overstepping the bounds of his “analytic realism” (p. 86) by painting “paper dolls pinned to the surface of the canvas” (p. 94).

In view of MyManet, I would agree with Sandblad to the extent that Olympia is taking a step forward to more unity in painting techniques and composition. Although, I would insist that Manet is not painting on the “surface of the canvas” (except in a trivial sense), but that his “dolls” are more like puppets on a stage – with all the layers and depth required to arrange the social relations between the actors on stage and relating to the agents beyond the picture space.
Manet’s “analytic realism” never relies on the naturalistic realities of “what is seen” alone but tries to capture “what exists”, i.e. the reality of relations created by gazes and gestures. Although I have to agree with Sandblad that Manet is playing here with a symbolic or “uncanny” dimension both with the cat and the “hidden other”. We have to return to this “depth” in Manet’s realism in a later post.

Olympia offers a special application of Manet’s scheme reduced to a two-person scenario; in this sense it is not the “definitive work” but a more specific work.
The impact of the dimension of power on the compositional aspects of the scheme is, however, important. We have seen already (in Post 16 about emotions) that the scheme has to be further differentiated to accommodate the basic structural realities of social relations, namely, the influence of power, exchange, truth, and trust.
We will keep this in mind when we take a closer look at the next multi-person painting following Jesus Mocked by the Soldiers (1865), namely, the Breakfast in the Atelier (1868).

In between, Manet had to recover from the shock and disappointment caused by the negative reception of, especially, Luncheon and Olympia. In 1865, he travelled to Spain to get re-assurance from his “Master” Velasquez. Following the trip and – relevant for our purposes in MyManet – he produced for about three years paintings which either chose the scale below the multi-person interaction (like still lives) or above (like the Execution of Maximilian). I will return to these paintings later.

In the following week, I will concentrate on painting myself rather than interpreting Manet.
Hopefully, I can contribute then to my neglected gallery!

So, see you again on September 23 !

Manet and Emotions (P 16)

By

On July 8, 2021

In Edouard Manet

Manet is not known as a painter of great emotions.
At his time, Eugene Delacroix was famous for painting expressive, emotional scenes, usually, referring to a mythological or historical event.
In case of Manet, critics complain that the figures in his paintings are curiously lacking emotions. They are not only “arrested” in their motions but also in their emotions.
Manet presents his figures in a way that the viewer feels like interrupting ongoing activities.
But typically, it is not even evident what kind of activities are interrupted and how the activity will be resumed.

The gaze of Manet’s figures is often described as evasive and unfocused or blunt and distancing.
Yet, they are not without emotion and their faces vary quite clearly in their expression.

Figure 1:  Four faces in Manet’s painting – four different expressions

In Figure 1, we see four faces – each one of the central figure in the painting (Luncheon, Christ Mocked, Olympia, and The Balcony) – and each with a very different expression. Two of the paintings we have already discussed, in case of Olympia and The Balcony we will take a closer look later.

Luncheon on the Grass, for instance, shows the woman recognizing the viewer somewhat sympathetically,
but we do not know what activity the couples are engaged in – presumably a picnic before or after bathing in the river – and what their relationships are – perhaps students having a good time in the park.
But then, the woman should not be naked in a public park…and the man next to her appears to be daydreaming rather than having fun.

How are we to interpret the somewhat reduced or detached expression of emotionality in Manet?

As stated previously, Manet does not want to tell Romantic or Historic “stories”. He considers himself a Realist and wants to show “what exists and what one sees” (Post 10).
And Manet wants do show contemporary life with the means of a painter and not with words, music, or dancing, or their combination in theatre and opera. His paintings are to show reality, but they do not talk or sing.

Strictly avoiding storytelling, Manet seems to except the consequence that he has to avoid emotions, too, since emotions characteristically arise in and are aroused by stories.

A painter cannot avoid telling stories without limiting the kind of emotions he can present in a painting.
In Impressionism we find emotional qualities reduced to general moods. In Expressionism, even Abstract Expressionism, emotionality is vibrant in paintings through colours, brushstrokes, and dynamic compositions,
but the scope of emotions is restricted compared to the subtleties of Symbolism.

I suggest that Manet’s choice can be understood better in view of recent theory of emotion.
He, obviously, was not acquainted with it, but he very well could have had an intuitive understanding of it, as we will see.
Jenefer Robinson  in Deeper than Reason. Emotion and its Role in Literarture, Music, and Art (2005) offers a very readable discussion of recent theories of emotion and their application in the arts including painting.
Emotions are described as a very complex and multi-layered dimension of our experience and actions.

On a “deep” layer, emotions are reactions or physiological states which respond directly to states of the body or environmental impacts and their sensory perception (pain, hunger, thirst, fatigue, arousal, etc.).
Manet never painted pain, although he painted death – the ultimate arrest of motion and emotion.

On a behavioural level, basic emotions (Richard Lazarus) are integral parts of our coping behaviour;
they are based on affective appraisals of the person-environment-relation (e.g. pleasurable, threatening).
These appraisals are non-cognitive and may not reach our consciousness.
Manet does not show people in the process of coping with some problem or threat. Such scenes inevitably would involve dynamic “stories”. More often, we find his sitters on a sofa reading or in deep thought.

On the next level, emotions are “cognitively monitored” (Robinson). Integrating emotional feelings with cognitive evaluations allows for more differentiated ways of “being in the world”.
For instance, fright or fear, disgust, envy, guilt, shame, sadness, pride, anger relief, hope, compassion, love, jealousy, anxiety, and happiness have been identified as basic emotions integrated into our way of life.

Such basic emotions are common to all human beings; we experience our natural and social world through our emotions as well as through our cognitive faculties. Some of us are more skilled and creative in experimenting with emotions than others, but we all can “be” and “do” things, relating to our environment and expressing our emotions while pursuing cognitively our goals and values (except in certain pathological cases).
This is the level of emotionality many critics are missing in Manet’s paintings:
Emotions as conscious expression of subjective feelings or individual subjectivity, expressions of who we are as a person.

These emotions are further developed and differentiated by socio-cultural learning.
We learn which emotions are adequate in certain relations and situations and how to modify and express them (or not) in specific cases, and to recognize them and their variation in others. The emotions we express – or others express – are not necessarily mirroring the feelings we subjectively have.
But these emotions are public, they are meant to be understood by others.
This means that the emotions exist objectively for everybody to see.
The emotions can affect the emotions of others, including their subjective feelings.
In as much as situations define what actions persons can chose, they also influence what kind of emotions the actors will have or at least display.

Just like the fashion we wear, displayed emotions present in part who we are, although they may not be authentic and present only a certain side to others and to the public.
Manet was certainly much aware of the role of fashion and of the fact that Parisians – especially in his upper-middle class social circle – were very careful in displaying “appropriate” emotions.
“Appropriate emotions” correspond to the character or structure of a situation and depend on the respective position one occupies, the emotions will be objective.
Looking at the position a person occupies should tell us something about the emotions that person is likely to have and help us interpreting available emotional cues which typically are ambiguous.

Identifying the pattern of emotions is a capacity which we learn together with orienting us in a multi-person context where different actions are motivated by different goals and emotions.
More generally, we learn to frame situations as certain types with characteristic actions and emotions of participants:
“This is a situation I have experienced before and I did not like what a person in a certain role was doing to me!”
This learning process occurs in childhood and by learning by example from others – e.g. mother and father, sister and brother.
Cognitive and emotional aspects of experience and actions are in this process not separated but intimately related, both are embedded in our body and in our everyday life environment which we take for granted as we pursue our goals.

The process involves necessarily more than the child and its “environment”.
Focusing on the development of the subjective self, we (and much of psychology, including Robinson) tend to neglect that we learn emotions in a multi-person context where others play certain roles:

–   To love somebody, there must be somebody to love.
–   To be envious, one must experience that somebody (your brother; second person) gets something from somebody (your mother; third person) what you (first person) don’t get.
–   To be competitive, one (first person) has to learn that an offer made by the other (second person) is only good if it is better than the alternative offer (by a third person) and that – if you are greedy and not trusted –
both may choose to exchange offers with somebody else entirely (fourth person).

Social relations and interactions are “charged” with emotions from the beginning before and while we learn to make finer cultural distinctions, tell stories about our emotional life to our friends or express emotions in the arts.
Social relations come in patterns; one person’s happiness may be somebody else’s misery.
Just like we learn (more or less skilfully) to locate ourselves in physical space and time allowing us to evaluate the accessibility of opportunities, and
just as we learn to claim and sustain our social position in relation to the position of others,
we learn to see our emotions as adequate feelings in view of the emotions of others.
Seeing the anger of the other because of the ruthless oppression by a third person, we find ourselves feeling sympathy for the underdog – unless we have learned to enjoy the exercise of power identifying with the oppressor.

Which brings us back to Manet.

Avoiding “great emotions” and storytelling in painting does not mean to avoid emotions altogether.
What we have to identify are “existing” dispositions and options for emotion in social relations,
which are,  in a sense, “above” the subjective feelings and expressions embodied in each individual
and “below” the finer distinctions warranted by the “story” which a novelist might expound.
These are the emotions residing in the structure of the relations or which correspond to the way participants frame their activities.

Back to Manet again, let us recall how he frames the situation of painting:

In My Manet, we assume that Manet shows a great interest in the social relations of painting.
These social relations reach beyond the figures in the picture space (“on stage”) and include the viewer, the painter, the model and other participants.

In discussing Manet’s realism, I also have proposed that Manet is aiming at “objectivity” rather than “subjectivity”. This means, he is interested not in showing how a person expresses his or her very personal emotional life
but rather what opportunities exist for certain emotional states given a certain position in social space.
In the analogy of the theatre, Manet is not showing the performance but the role in the script and the position of the actor on stage.

Relations in social space have a form and a content, they form a pattern and create opportunities for actions and emotions as content.
To visualize form and content in this structural sense, let us look at a simple social scene and represent its structure in diagrams:

Example:
Imagine a mother telling her somewhat reluctant son to bring out the garbage (certainly a realistic scene!).
Now she can say either of four things:

A:   “O.K., if you bring out the garbage, then I will give you time for your gaming.”
(meaning: you give something I want, I give something you want
– an exchange of goods)

B:   “Otherwise, when you don’t bring it out, then I will not allow you to go out tonight!”
(meaning: you do not something I want, then I see to it that you cannot do what you want
– an exercise of power)

C:   (now pleading) “Look, we share the belief that in a nice family the children follow the wish of their parents. My wish is now that you bring out the (d…..) garbage.”
(meaning: you and I accept a norm, I invoke now the norm, and you should act accordingly)
– an interpretation or truth of a legitimate order)

D:   (now exasperated) “I don’t want to offer you something each time I ask you to do something, and I don’t want to force you again and again, and surely I don’t want to have a big argument every time about why it is meaningful to follow the rules
– would you, please, do it just because you care for me?”
(meaning: you and I are members of a group or community caring for and trusting each other)
– an appeal to love and trust

We don’t know how the story goes on, but these are the basic options.
The mother can frame the issue either as a matter of exchange, power, truth, or trust.

The framework sets “the stage” for the basic content of the interaction.
Whenever one person wants that another person takes the next step in an interaction, these alternatives (or a combination) are “in the air”. They are the medium for creating motivations and, depending on the actions chosen, they determine the scope of appropriate emotions.
Daniel Coleman – in his bestseller Emotional Intelligence (1995, p.111-2) – describes a wonderful case where a 2 ½-year-old boy is already pulling all four registers in trying to calm down his 5-year-old brother.
We learn the basics of emotion in interaction already early in life!

The situation becomes more complicated when more than two persons are involved. The situation will also change as the interaction goes on and alternative actions are chosen by the participants, perhaps altering the frame.

But as a first step – with Manet in mind – we can now draw simple diagrams involving only the self and the other as in Figure 2.
As a frame, we use the four options from the little scene above. In the centre we place the four faces and assign – tentatively – an emotion to each one.
The faces and frames are arranged in a fourfold table or a “field of four forces” since each corner wields its particular influence over all options.

Figure 2 :   Four Faces and their Emotional Expression in Manet’s Paintings in the Structural Framework

Let me comment each face and its place in the framework, starting with the Luncheon on the Grass.

Luncheon on the Grass
The self is the central woman looking at the viewer, the other in this case.
Her gaze is mildly sympathetic and trusting. We assume a relation to the viewer which is characterized by some communality and symmetry indicated by the enclosing ellipse.

Olympia
The self is the courtesan looking at the viewer who finds himself potentially in the role of a customer.
Her gaze is somewhat distancing and self–asserting demonstrating that she is defending her high-ground. The relationship is clearly asymmetrical and “business” with no underlying communality (no circle).

The Balcony
The self is a woman sitting on her balcony, in public view, but she directs her attention not to the viewer but to some other person or to some event of interest to her in the street.
The relationship is unclear, perhaps the other shows also interest in her. The relationship is basically symmetrical – since the other seems not to exercise any power – but it is also not inclusive (no circle).

Christ Mocked by the Soldiers
The self is here Christ directing his gaze to God Father (Big Other) in awe and humility.
The relationship is obviously inclusive (circle) but also asymmetrical with God Father representing an inclusive entity exercising “authority” and representing a legitimate order or higher truth which, in this case, can even demand the sacrifice of Christ’s life.

Obviously, there is much more to say about the paintings and their figures including the other roles of Manet’s scheme.
And I will say more about the essential social categories – highlighted in italics – and represented in the little diagrams as we go along to other paintings.
The point is here that we can approach the question of emotions in paintings in different ways:

The usual approach focuses on the individuals and their expression of very individual feelings.
Their emotions might be triggered by events or “stories” depicted in the painting.
Or: In expressionistic paintings, the viewer might find himself or herself in the role of being emotionally affected by the painting.

Manet seems to prefer another approach.
He positions his figures in a network of formal relations, a social form, and provides only the necessary cues for interpreting the emotional dimension of the objective scene without digging into their very personal emotional life or imposing the emotions of a “drama” on the actors.

Manet does this in a Realistic manner in two ways:
– He opens the social space of the painting to include the viewer and others around the painting, since the reality is that the paintings gain their reality only by “being-seen”.
– He shows what exists and what one sees in the reality of the painting situation – typically in his atelier.
Here, Manet arranges his models “on a stage” which he indicates in his compositions and he shows the emotions his models really show in that situation. Sometimes, he makes a lot of effort to create an arrangement in his atelier which transports an outside “reality”, e.g. a bar, into his atelier. But his realism demands that this fact remains transparent to the viewer.

Manet does not follow a naturalistic approach trying to copy what he sees but shows what exists beyond the accidental appearance of the arrangement – a “reasoned imagination” (see Post 10).
Applied to emotions, this means showing the emotional dimension of figures, their positions and relations as they are displayed and publicly accessible in the situation – just like the fashion and cosmetics of a beautiful woman!

A final remark for today:
Manet does not show or express his own emotions.
Critics – especially, under the influence of Expressionism and Marx or Freud – have attempted to demonstrate how Manet was hiding his own emotions, but “betraying” (Robinson) these emotions in subtle ways in his paintings.
This may well be.
But in MyManet, we do not need to assume that Manet somehow suppressed his own emotionality.
His Realism motivated him to “show what exists and what one sees” when painting.
Manet was a “sincere painter” – as all who knew him confirmed.

Speaking of beautiful women, now that we have clarified how Manet treats emotions, we are prepared to look at the greatest scandal of his painterly career, the Olympia.

Sorry,
but I have to change my usual invitation “See you next Week!
I will enjoy a summer pause like everyone and everything in Finland.

So, See You in a month on August 12th!

Painting Christ – Another Self-Portrait? (P15)

By

On July 1, 2021

In Edouard Manet

Both paintings of Christ – Christ Mocked by the Soldiers and Dead Christ with Angels – have been interpreted as hidden self-portraits.
A certain likeness exists, especially in Christ Mocked (see previous Post 14).

But I agree with James Rubin (2010) that the relation is more metaphorical:
Manet is presenting himself as a painter through the painting rather than representing himself as a person in the painting.
This prompts Rubin to draw a connection to the Self-Portrait with a Palette
(see Post 12).

Figure 1:  Comparing Dead Christ with Angels(1864)  and Self-Portrait with a Palette (1879)

Here, I like to cite Rubin (2010) at length:

“Additionally, Christ’s body is so intensified  by its life size, frontal position, and proximity more blatant than in any art-historical precedent that as an image in reverse it could connote a literal mirror image of whoever contemplates it … imposing on the viewer’s actual space and forcing a response. “(p. 102-3; emphasis added)

“In his paintings of the 1860s, Manet responds not just to the eye but to the gaze; he represented not just the hand but its creative function; he imagined not only the appearance of the body but its vitality. The body, whether nude of clothed, was rarely neutral but rather powerfully present and communicating with the viewer’s realm as well as bearing the marks of the process of its creation.
The Dead Christ with Angels is the painting in which these characteristics are perhaps most compelling.
For here the marks of a corpse coming into being within art ironically suggest the opposite processes of decay and death….The drama of life and death, creative power and inanimate substance, is represented by the hand
– the hand of Christ as represented by the painter and, as in the self-portrait, by the painter’s hand painting itself.” (p.156; emphasis added)

Three themes are suggested by Rubin:
– Manet’s motivation to present himself in the image of Christ
– the meaning of the mirror
– the role of the eye and the hand in the representation of the painter and painting.

For all three themes Rubin offers an interpretation which goes beyond the limits of this post, and I recommend Rubin for deeper insights drawing on philosophy (Schopenhauer) and psychoanalysis (Lacan).
But I would like to add some comments in view of MyManet looking through the eyes of the painter in his aim to engage the viewer:

First, Manet does not imply a direct identification – the artist Manet as God-like – but Rubin points out that Dead Christ with Angels is an “optimistic work” (p.105). The artist, the viewer, and Christ’s realistic body are sharing a rather intimate space and a close relationship in the experienced presence meaning that there is a potential for transcending suffering and being creative not only as an artist.

Second, the mirror is an important means of self-reflection, not only in the process of painting a self-portrait, but also for the reflection of one’s identity and role in life.
The mirror is not shown directly in either painting; in Figure 2, I have added a yellow frame indicating the mirror. Rubin points out that the paintings create the impression of a close distance as taken in front of a mirror.
This is obvious in case of the self-portrait but also in both paintings of Christ.
In the case of Dead Christ, the wound of Christ from the spear (under his heart) is on the wrong side – as if reflected in a mirror. Critics at Manet’s time were quick to point out this “mistake”. Manet refused to correct this, apparently because the effect of a mirror was intended.

Figure 2: Christ embodying Manet’s scheme   and   Study to Dead Christ with Angels (1864)

In fact, in the study (Figure2), the image is not mirrored and the wound on the “correct” side.
Since the study is not a print (where we might expect a reversed image) but in oil, Manet is experimenting again.

Another clue for the existence of a mirror is not mentioned by Rubin.
Looking closely at the toes of Christ’s foot extending toward the front, we see a strange diffuse spot reminding of the painting hand in the self-portrait (Figure 1).
The toe seems to be touching the mirror! (yellow circle in Figure 2)
In the study this detail is not indicated and the foot is not extended so far forward.
Thus, Manet made the change deliberately.

The self-reflective gaze into the mirror draws the viewer (and the painter) into the space of the painting.
At the same time, by making explicit the role of the painting as a mirror image beyond the picture plane, the painter/viewer can distance himself or herself from the image and take a fresh and objective look.
In the case of the self-portrait, we saw that the painting initiated and mediated a communication between the painter, his image and the viewer by having the painter “seeing you”. In case of Dead Christ, both painter and viewer are asked to reflect on themselves as if “seen as Christ”.

Moreover, a special effect of Dead Christ resides in the fact that Christ is not looking at the painter/viewer but presumably to God Father – though with an inward or “absorbed” gaze. The mirror supports an expectation of Christ “looking at you”, while Christ’s gaze redirects your gaze to God or the “Big Other”.
In the study (Figure 2), Christ is looking more toward the viewer establishing a direct contact in the role of the First. In the finished painting, Manet redirects the viewer’s gaze toward the body and the hands, and directs Christ’s gaze away from the viewer.

Third, the redirection of the viewer’s gaze creates a very complex situation which leads us back to Manet’s scheme. Christ looking at God Father places him into the role of the Third looking outward. The two angels are “absorbed” in mourning (yellow); perhaps the one holding Christ from the back may be seen as doubling in the role of the “Other” (light green). I prefer interpreting the angels as creating the mourning atmosphere or a “coulisse” (this effect is stronger in the study) while Christ is presented “on stage” (light middle ground).
In the case of the self-portrait, I suggested that the self in the mirror may be seen in either of the four roles of the scheme.
In the case of Christ, we might see him incorporating all four roles:

The illumination on the “stage” creates a strange depth in the painting:
The foot reaches forward into the darker frontstage (enhanced in red), while the head recedes into the darker backstage (green triangle).
The gaze of Christ is directed inward/outward relating to the external “authority” or the “Big Other” (purple circle).
For the roles of the First and the Second, we return to Rubin’s interpretation relating the painter’s eye and hand. Eyes or gazes and hands or gestures constitute for Manet the space of painting.
In the self-portrait, the eye is “seeing” and representing reality, the hand is “performing” and presenting the reality as seen by the painter.

Christ is not looking at the viewer (or painter) but reaches out with his foot which bears the mark of a wound like an eye. Similarly, the two hands are opened and presented to us with their wounds like eyes.
Christ is “facing” us with his wounds.
The “eye” on his foot takes the role of the First (red circle), the “eyes” on his hands mediate in the middle ground taking the role of the Second (blue circles) and preserving the unity of Christ’s vulnerable body.
We have seen this unifying role already in the Luncheon on the Grass, where the hand of the Second – the person to the right – is placed in the centre of the triad with an inclusive gesture.
Finally, compared with the study, Manet places Christ’s head further back into the dark and moves the head of the caring angel into the light. This supports a double role of Christ:
– as the Third, he directs his dying gaze toward God Father;
– as the “Other”, he is looking from the dark background increasing his distance from the viewer who is focusing on the illuminated dead or dying body.

We need not agree on one or the other interpretation. Clearly, Manet is creating an ambiguous space, as Rubin characterizes it, with a dynamic of intimate approach and mourning retreat, of an optimistic view of life and a process of decay and death – “the drama of life and death”(Rubin).
The point is:

While Manet’s scheme is not immediately guiding the composition, as in Christ Mocked, we still can sense its influence in the way the dynamics of eye and hand, of gazes and gestures unfold in the painting and engage the viewer into an intimate social space.
Although the “drama of life and death” is the theme, Manet does not draw us into a dramatic narrative.
Again, Manet is presenting a “moment in between” and not telling a “story”.
Still, the two paintings of Christ are loaded with emotion compared with the other paintings we have considered so far.
But, typical for Manet, the emotions appear to “arrested” like the activities.
How does this fit into his formal scheme?

See you next week!

Manet Painting Christ (P14)

By

On June 25, 2021

In Edouard Manet

Manet was a republican and not particularly religious. As a realist, he rejected the Romantic, mystic, and religious themes of the past and preferred subjects of contemporary life.
Still, he painted two major works portraying Jesus Christ.
Why?

Art historians are somewhat puzzled by this fact. One usual explanation is that Manet wanted to preserve art traditions, although in a distinctly modern way (Rubin 2010, p.99). Another explanation points out that Manet at this stage was still searching for his own style and theme, and tried all traditions including religious themes

Figure 1:  Manet painting Christ

At the time, an influential book by Ernest Renan (La Vie de Jesus 1863) described the life of Christ realistically from a scientific, historian perspective. It is generally assumed that Manet wanted to demonstrate that he could transpose not only the nude (Luncheon on the Grass) but also depictions of Christ into modern times.

Typically, art historians do not like the two paintings of Christ, Dead Christ with Angels (1864) and Christ Mocked by the Soldiers (1865). This holds for critics at the time as well as more recent evaluations.
Some find them horrible (Wollheim), see them as his most eclectic works (Hamilton), and books about Manet usually pay little attention to them – if at all.
Rubin offers an illuminating view on Dead Christ (we return to it later), but, curiously, fails to discuss Christ Mocked although showing the picture.
The paintings are considered “history paintings” (Krell; Hanson), and it is quickly added that Manet painted no more works of that genre afterwards.

The most favourable remarks tend to point out that Manet counterbalanced his more contemporary themes with a religious work to appease the jury of the Salon exhibition. He submitted Incident in the Bull Ring (later cut-up by Manet) with Dead Christ with Angels in 1864 and Olympia with Christ Mocked by the Soldiers in 1865.
The strategy did not work – the critics liked the Christs even less.
I must admit that they escaped my attention, too – until MyManet.

Again, why did Manet paint them, and in the way he did?

Part of the explanation is given by the motivations above.
Hanson (1977) has taken a more favourable view on the two paintings:
“Manet has attempted to make a universal image for all time, any time, all people and all places which has to do with human feelings on a level shared by saints and heroes with most ordinary men (p. 110).”

Especially for Christ Mocked, I see also another motivation, namely, to experiment with his newly developed scheme!
Although, both paintings are not obvious applications of the scheme.
In view of My Manet, they are experiments with the scheme, and Luncheon on the Grass is, in turn, one of its possible variations.
This needs some explanation.

The formal scheme allows not only for adaptations according to the theme at hand.
It can also be used to systematically generate new compositions.

The “Trick” is to change the positions of the main actors on the “stage” and “fill in” the social space created with some suitable scene and corresponding roles.
For instance, each of the three members of the triad could occupy the central position, while the others take up supporting roles. And the variation may include the position and role of “the Other” and “absorbed” figures. Obviously, Manet is not rigidly applying a scheme. But My Manet assumes that the scheme is influencing the way he envisions and composes chosen themes.

Especially intriguing is the option to place the First – looking at the viewer – in the background and moving the Third – looking at the “authority” – to the front.
Other options are available, but when you are set to paint a Christ, what is more convincing than placing Christ (as Third) front and centre turning his gaze up to his Father (the “authority”)?

This happens in Christ Mocked, therefore, we will look at this painting first, although Manet painted Dead Christ with Angels a year earlier.

Hanson points out that Christ Mocked has a number of sources, the most often cited is by Titian The Crowning with Thorns (1543) in the Louvre museum. Her discussion prompted me to search myself a little bit, and I found a painting by Léon Benouville The Mockery of Christ (1845). The painting won the Grand Prix d’Rome and is exhibited in the École des Beaux-Arts, Paris. Although I cannot confirm it, it seems that Manet should have known it. The painting won an award and it represents exactly the tradition of the Academy which he opposed.

Figure 2: Two sources of Christ Mocked by Soldiers
Interestingly, the two paintings suggest that Benouville was also inspired by Titian. The figures moving in on Christ from left and right, the elevation of the stairs, and the composition of the background appear to be quite similar. The gaze of Christ, however, varies:
Benouville chooses the gaze at the viewer,
Titian diverts the gaze to the side, and
Manet lets Christ gaze upward and beyond the scene.

We know that Manet liked to “copy” other sources, we saw this practice already in Luncheon on the Grass.
If Manet used these paintings as a reference, then, we also should assume that he deliberately decided to direct the gazes in his version of the scene – as he did in the case of Luncheon. In fact, Manet painted a head of Christ in the same year with the gaze turned down – experimenting with a fourth, “absorbed” option!

Titian shows us a scene which is characterized by the violent dynamics of the crowning with thorns.
The viewer is expected to be moved in empathy with the pain of Christ, but the viewer is not directly engaged.
Therefore, we focus on the comparison of Manet and Benouville.

Figure 3: Application of Manet’s scheme to
Christ Mocked by Soldiers and Benouville The Mockery of Christ

In Figure 3, the two paintings are displayed with some additions:

– For Manet’s version, I have added a diagram with a variation of his scheme.
– For Benouville, I took the liberty to mirror the painting, to shade off some of the soldiers, and to copy Christ’s head from Manet into the painting.
I think the correspondence between the paintings is striking.

Perhaps the most surprising detail is the face of the soldier facing the viewer. It seems that Manet has portrayed the same soldier with the same beard, just in a different mood.
The soldier kneeling before Christ could also be the same person (– at least, they could be visiting the same barbershop).
The third soldier turns his head in the same way toward Christ, only in Manet’s version he borrowed the helmet from the (shaded) soldier sitting on the stairs.
The correspondences with Benouville’s version support the view that Manet is creatively applying the composition of Luncheon on the Grass!

But let us have a closer look at the diagram analysing Manet’s Christ Mocked.

In view of My Manet, Manet has applied his principles to the painting of Benouville (and Titian):

The scene is transposed into the presence – at least, the costumes of the soldiers avoid clear reference to the past and could be selected from any theatre fundus at the time.
Critics have pointed out that the whole setting reminds of a stage rather than a biblical scene of the past.

The number of persons is reduced to the essential figures in the scheme, with the exception of the kneeling soldier to the left.
Manet wanted this additional figure, probably, for the same reason as Benouville, namely, to lead the viewer’s gaze to the face of Christ. Since Benouville’s Christ is staring out toward the viewer, one may question the need for this onlooking figure in his case.
In Manet’s version, we are reminded of the onlooking figure in Velazquez’ The Drinkers (Post 4) – and Manet can always be expected to make some reference to the Master.

The triad – First, Second, and Third – is placed in a very narrow or “flat” pictorial space, as in Luncheon on the Grass. The engaging First is now positioned to the back, as is the Second looking from the left.

The interaction is, again, somehow arrested emphasizing the structure of the relations and leaving the question open how the interaction will resume.
The effect is that the viewers attention is drawn to the vulnerability of Christ, and not to the ongoing aggression and mockery by the soldiers.

A variation of the scheme is apparent in the position and role of the “Other”.
It is interesting that Benouville does, in fact, include onlookers from the back (green ellipse). Even in Titian we might see this role taken by the sculptured head in the background.
Manet, apparently, decided that shutting off the background with a black “coulisse” will add more to the expression of vulnerability, placing Christ in the spotlight on a dark stage, as it were.
We may also assume that the dominance of the unrepresented “Big Other”, God Father, induced Manet to leave out the “Other” and have the black screen suggest the “Other” behind the scene.
Additionally, the First looking from the back would compete with the “Other”. So, Manet rather chose to accentuate the gaze of the First by creating a diagonal toward him. The gaze of the kneeling soldier is directed to Christ but also beyond to the First. The kneeling soldier doubles, in a way, as onlooker and the “Other” looking from a different perspective on the scene.

Remarkable is, moreover, the foreground.
Typically, Manet inserts a little “still life” (indicated in the diagram by our lemon icon). The rope and the arrow on the right side are balancing the foot of the kneeling soldier, both reaching out into the viewer’s space.
In the middle, we are confronted with those over sized feet which create the impression of a close-up attracting and repelling the viewer at the same time, shortening the distance to this vulnerable body.
I wonder if Manet is having some insider fun with these feet. Titian shows Christ with powerful legs fighting the crowning, while Benouville has Christ’s feet feebly peeking out underneath the robe – and then adds the soldier’s feet occupying the immediate foreground (Figure 3).
It must have been tempting to make a caricature of those extremities.

Seeing Christ Mocked by the Soldiers in the perspective of MyManet demonstrates that Manet is developing his formal scheme further. This is the multi-figure painting following Luncheon on the Grass only a year or two later.
It is the last time that Manet choses a religious theme, and it is also ending the early period strongly under the influence of the Old Masters.
But it is not the last painting experimenting with the scheme.
The next multi-figure painting, again experimenting with the scheme, will follow three years later with The Breakfast in the Atelier (1868) (often titled The Luncheon, but I want to avoid confusions with Luncheon on the Grass).
Now the painting will be unequivocally a transcription of modern life, although Hamilton still has the “curious feeling of figures arbitrarily arranged in modern settings rather than seen suddenly and as suddenly set down on the canvas“ (1969, p.130). This stage, he sees already accomplished by Claude Monet and Pierre-August Renoir.
But Manet has his own agenda, not totally compatible with impressionism.

However,
before we follow Manet to his next experiment, I would like to discuss the other painting of Christ – Dead Christ with Angels. In this case, we will discover the influence of the scheme but not a straightforward application.

And, Yes, I still owe you a post on Olympia (1965), the other great scandal of Manet’s breakthrough.
But a step at a time, first the Dead Christ and then the living prostitute Olympia.

See You next week!

My Manet – looking back and looking forward (13)

By

On June 18, 2021

In Edouard Manet

Looking back on the first twelve Posts, we notice that I still have not answered my initial question about Why? – about why Luncheon on the Grass has fascinated me about 60 years ago.

Looking forward, I should describe what is next and how I want to go from here.

Let us look at the initial question first, even if a final answer – if there is such a thing – will not be possible. I keep learning about my engagement with Manet.

As mentioned in About, there are some likely factors that could have raised my interests, which did not play an important role in my case.
When I started my hobby, painting in the family kitchen in Cologne, Germany, in the early 1960ies, I was not really interested in art history and knew little to nothing about Edouard Manet.
Even his paintings – speaking to me themselves – made not a great impression.

Perhaps with the exception of Victorine Meurent – the model – looking at me!

Figure 1:
Victorine looking at me – an ink sketch 1982 and digital sketch 2021


It is telling that twenty years later, when I had another “fit” for painting, I started with ink sketches of the figures in Luncheon and other portraits by Manet    – and still do …

Actually, I favoured other painters – like Cezanne, Braque, Matisse, or Vlaminck – basically, the next generation of painters agreed to be the founders of modern art.
Besides, my preferences changed over time and included abstract and – later – contemporary painting.
So, the aesthetics of Manet’s paintings, in a narrower sense, were not an important aspect.

Seeing him as a rebel or revolutionary in the development of modern art, was not an attraction either.
My own political interests started later with the “68-movement”, as a student in Hamburg.
I just wanted to paint in my spare time.

So, the attraction must have originated from the form and content of the painting, from the way Manet presented the figures. (And the attraction had little if anything to do with the fact that Victorine was naked. That was a cause for a scandal in Paris a hundred years earlier, but not in Germany after the “sexual revolution” of the 1950ies.)

Two factors might have caught my attention, Manet’s “theatricality” (to use Micheal Fried’s term) and the puzzling social relations in the painting which are disturbing viewers and interpreters to this day.

The theatre played a great role in my life at the time.
My mother was a trained actor, although she was – as a wife and mother of two children – only exercising her profession in a lay theatre. The theatre was, however, of the scope and quality of a large city institution (subsidized heavily by local industry). And I spent much of my time not only in the audience, but also backstage watching rehearsals, assisting in painting coulisses, and operating the illumination during performances.

Many times, I would find myself in a position illustrated in Manet’s Lola de Valence:
Being backstage and looking down at the actress waiting to go on stage, while sitting about 2 meters above her to the right operating the spotlights.

Figure 2:  Manet Lola de Valence (1862)

Seeing a theatre scene unfolding in Luncheon on the Grass, therefore, must have occurred to me quite naturally. “Theatricality” certainly was an attractive feature then, and, not surprisingly, it is influencing my interpretation of Manet’s works now – as a puppet theatre.

Concerning the puzzling social relations, a somewhat similar phenomenon happened.
Only well into my professional life as a sociologist I realized that I was attracted to the “formal sociology” of Georg Simmel (1858–1918), a founding father of the discipline around the turn of the century.
However, he was not my favourite.
Simmel made himself a name analysing modern life as it developed at the times of Manet and has influenced art historians. But my interests were in social change and social policy, both not the strongholds of Simmel.

Still, the impact of the formal structure of social relations, the number of people and the patterns of their networks, intrigued me. Simmel was one of the first to systematically analyse the social forms underlying social processes beyond any particular cultural content.
He was a strong advocate of individuality and the expression of individuality in cultural life – in fashion, consumption, media, religion, and the arts. But he was critical of egocentric individualism; he saw the individual intertwined in a network of social relations, forming a pluralism of social circles and distinct realms like science, arts, religion, politics, and the economy.
Society was, in his view, more characterized by diversity than by any unifying cultural idea or socio-economic power.

For somebody like me – not yet influenced by the great ideas and the political dimension of social change – the formal structure in interactions and the conflicting potentials for action was perhaps appealing.
My background in the reality of theatre demonstrated to me that the “content” of the play will change, but the “form” of actors, their costumes and cosmetics, the stage, and the technologies would be similar in the next performance. In sociology, I directed my interests toward urban sociology looking at people on their “stage” in society.
In as much as Manet put his figures on a stage, the actors can change, they are ready to play different parts in different dramas. And somebody has to provide the stage and the illumination…

There is a third factor, which influences my current reflections on Manet more than it probably did back then.
It is linked to Manet’s realism.
Science attracted me more than art; in terms of our discussion of Manet’s realism:
discovery in the spirit of objectivity seemed to be more my thing than expressing my subjectivity.
Manet experienced already the pressure of an enhanced subjectivity and individualism which turned his objectivity in an “attitude” which the impressionists did not share, perhaps with the exception of Edgar Degas (Herbert 1988). But Degas’ objectivity flowed from a dislike for more intimate human relations, while Manet was a sympathetic and social companion with close friends throughout his life.
In some way, I might have sensed that Manet was also choosing the objective over the subjective.
Although for him that meant a choice for self-critical realism and discovery within art; for me it meant a choice for critical realism and discovery in the field of knowledge.

Now, we meet again in the exploration of his art in an objective spirit.
Accepting Manet’s position that his medium is painting and not language or poetry, the common ground has to be the exploration of visual rather than verbal communication.
Accepting his realism, we place the individuals in real life settings, although presented within a “realistic formalism” (Lüthy), or  – with the words of Courthion – mankind presented in “composed instants … and the poetry of space in painting” (see previous post).

So, where to go from here?

We keep the spirit of simplicity, sincerity, and naiveté combined with a certain detached objectivity.
And we look at other paintings which present relations between people on a scale which allows their gazes to compose a social space – seeing, being seen, and reflecting on being seen by others.

On this route, we will take the “formal” analysis two steps further.
Comparing the four paintings in Figure 3, we may notice that Manet varies the character of the gaze connecting with the viewer significantly and changes the position on the stage of our four actors.

Figure 3: Gazes and Positions in Manet’s Painting – Four Different Cases

Actually, none of the gazes of the central figures has the somewhat evading expression often considered typical for Manet’s subjects, the prime example for this gaze being the barmaid in Bar at the Folies-Bergeré.

In Luncheon we are offered a rather friendly if non-committing smile; in Olympia the gaze is quite self-assertive keeping own dignity vis a vis the viewer in the possible role of a customer; in The Balcony the dominant gaze (of Berthe Morisot) is not directed at us but into the public sphere; and in Jesus Mocked by Soldiers the gaze of Jesus is clearly turned to his Father beyond the painting.

In the following, we want to consider these differences in the character of gazes, and we want to pay attention to the shifting position of our actors and their gazes in the painting.
For instance: in The Balcony the position of the First looking at us, the viewer, is shifted into the middle ground to the right; in Jesus Mocked the First moves even more toward the back.
Still, in both paintings we find our “crew of four” in the formal scheme, and we should try to apply it and interpret the configuration.

We have dealt with Luncheon on the Grass now extensively. Since Manet appears to think and work in series of paintings experimenting with structural elements (see previous post), we should turn to the next in line. Actually, this should be Olympia which he painted parallel to Luncheon finishing it somewhat later.
I have chosen the rather unknown example of Jesus Mocked which is the next painting in the series presenting a multi-person interaction, because Olympia is already a special case inhabiting only two persons (and a cat).

Remember, there are other kinds of paintings – still lives, portraits, larger settings, and sea- or landscapes.
But Jesus Mocked by Soldiers is the next multi-figure painting and candidate for the proposed “formal scheme”.
Let’s try it out.

See you next week!

Manet’s Self-Portraits – Seeing Oneself Seeing (P12)

By

On June 12, 2021

In Edouard Manet

In the previous posts, I have developed a scheme which – as proposed by MyManet – is guiding Manet’s composition of Luncheon on the Grass. The claim is that this scheme is not only a scheme for this painting but is a “hidden scheme” informing also the composition of following paintings.

To show this, I first want to apply the scheme to his self-portraits.
Manet painted only two self-portraits late in his career 1878-9. He inserted small images of himself in early paintings like The Fishing and Music in the Tuileries, as we have seen, and later in Masked Ball at the Opera. But they were not self-portraits in the narrower sense, more like ironic comments.

It seems that he did not especially like to paint self-portraits, although he liked his painter friends, for instance, Henri Fantin-Latour and Edgar Degas to picture him. Figure 1 shows two often reproduced pictures.

Figure 1: Portraits of Manet by Henri Fantin-Latour and Edgar Degas

The pictures and the self-portraits below show Manet as the “dandy” enjoying his life as a painter. And most references to the paintings just use them for illustrating this point. But there is more to them.

So, one question concerns the Why?
Why did Manet paint self-portraits rather late in his life?
An interesting remark by James Rubin (2010, p.372) suggests that “Manet’s self-portraits certainly look back to the dialogue of gazes in his pictures of Victorine and Morisot” (e.g. Luncheon on the Grass and The Balcony – RP).
Rubin does not elaborate this remark and goes on to suggest that they also “set the stage for A Bar at the Folies-Bergére”, the last great masterpiece by Manet.
This seems to imply that the self-portraits demonstrate in some way the scheme of MyManet, and that the scheme, in fact, never loses its relevance in Manet’s painting over the stages of his career.

But, obviously, a self-portrait is not the kind of painting to which we would expect the multi-person scheme to apply.
On the other hand, if I can show that the scheme helps to interpret Manet’s view of himself, that would be a great test for the scheme.
So, let us try!

Figure 2 shows the two self-portraits by Manet and below a detail from Las Meninas by Velasquez with the master himself, and a painting by the very young Rembrandt standing somewhat lost in his bare atelier. Velazquez we have met in earlier posts as Manet’s idol. The little painting by Rembrandt I found in An Introduction to Art by Charles Harrison (2009).

Figure 2:  Manet’s Self-Portraits and Self-Portraits of Diego Velazquez and Rembrandt

Self-portraits typically show what Lüthy (2006) has described as “seeing oneself seeing”, the painter looks at himself or herself in the mirror (or in a photograph) and sees the image looking back.
This reflexivity is a welcome starting point for philosophical interpretations which the painter may or may not have entertained himself or herself.

I want to set these interpretations aside and rather take the view of MyManet. In this view, Manet is foremost a realist and attempts in all sincerity to “show what exists and what one sees” (see Post 10). This includes for him to place the activity of painting into a setting which implies a social space and an environment (e.g. his atelier) with actual (e.g. the model) or virtual (e.g. the viewer) others.

In this scheme, the figure in the self-portrait can be seen in different roles:

Case 1: The figure is the First looking and engaging the viewer and/or painter.
Most self-portraits, not only Manet’s, chose this role. The painter is presented as a person ready to communicate with the viewer, even when the figure is shown in different emotional states and signalling the incapacity or unwillingness to engage with the viewer and rather addresses himself or herself. In these cases, the painting demonstrates even more the reflexive engagement with the painter.

Case 2:  The figure is the Second, typically alone in the painting and looking outside the frame, although only to present the (half-)profile to the viewer.
The objects in view of this figure are irrelevant to the painting, of relevance may be the very fact that the painter does not show his frontal face. This creates a distance from the viewer which can signal, for instance, a social distance of a person of status.
Manet’s self-portrait standing in his atelier may be seen as a version of this case.

In fact, I think that this self-portrait is made exactly to experiment with this case, while the self-portrait with palette experiments with the other cases. Both paintings are created at the same time.
He can be interpreted to look critically at the painting itself rather than at the viewer, quasi looking from the side. The figure in the mirror (Manet) will be standing to the left of the painting and may even have a (virtual) view of the painting. This is suggested by Barbara Wittmann, although she sees the gaze of Manet both as “absent” and “intensely” observing, which appears to me incompatible and stretching the interpretation (2004, p.223).

I agree that a painter choosing to present himself as not looking at the viewer does present himself as an “Other” (p.220), but only in the general sense of being “objectively” represented. Thus, Manet shows himself in the role of the model, and the model in the mirror substitutes, as it were, as a kind of double for the unrepresented Second. The viewer, not being the centre of the figure’s gaze, might imagine that there is somebody else just outside the painting. This would be a normal reaction when looking at someone who is not looking at you.

This case 2 raises the interesting problem that Manet as the painter cannot see himself with the gaze of a Second
(or an absorbed figure) – the figure not looking back at him – in the mirror!
Nobody can – again, a great starting point for philosophical interpretations.
In the age of photography, already at Manet’s time, we can look at our image in profile or as absorbed gazing at some other object. Or we might have a friend like Degas who can draw us (see Figure 1). But we cannot see it in the mirror.

For a naturalistic realism, this is a problem because one cannot see and paint what one knows to exist – one’s view in profile – because one cannot see it. The realist Gustave Courbet famously said that he would paint an angel but only if he could see it. Well, he painted his self-portraits – like the image in The Painter’s Studio (Post 6) and many other self-portraits – without ever seeing it exactly that way. Following the tradition, he corrected the reversion by the mirror – showing the “real” Courbet he could not see –  sometimes on the basis of a photograph.
For Manet’s realism, this is not necessarily a crucial problem. It is a fact of everyday life that we do not see e.g. all sides of an object and that we have to infer the “hidden” views which show what exists.
In his self-portrait with the palette, he must deliberately have chosen to paint the mirrored image – showing what he sees! Why?
In the self-portrait standing he also shows the mirrored image. But he shows a face that he cannot have seen in the mirror! Why?

Case 3: The portrait can imagine the role of the Third.
In Figure 2, a charming example is the self-portrait of Rembrandt. Harrison apparently loves this little painting as much as I do. But I do think that he misinterprets the gaze of the young artist. Harrison points out that Rembrandt is not looking at his painting, and he suggests that the artist is looking at an imagined viewer (p.8-10). He provides a detailed view of the painting to prove his point. However, Rembrandt is not looking at the viewer of his painting, his gaze is directed slightly upward, and the imagined viewer would have to stand in a some elevated position more to the right. Actually, his gaze is very similar to the gaze of the Third in the scheme of Luncheon on the Grass, the male sitting next to the female engaging the viewer.
As indicated already in Case 2 about the Second, this is not a sight of himself which Rembrandt could have seen in real life or in a mirror. We have also no reason to assume that he looks at anyone or anything in particular existing unrepresented just outside the picture frame. Rembrandt presents himself as gazing at some idea or “authority”, perhaps inwardly in wonder about his future as an artist.

In the following unique and amazing series of self-portraits Rembrandt demonstrates how he explores his inner potential through a reflection expressed in self-portraits. Thus, the “Big Other” of Manet’s scheme, toward whom the Third is directing the gaze, might turn out to be the most inner self of a genius.  Georg Simmel in his analysis of Rembrandt (1916) has described how Rembrandt expresses his genius as a force from within the painting (like an actor expressing subjectively-involved his role on stage), while Velazquez and Manet are examples of artists who express a principle they experience in reality (like an actor presenting objectively-detached his role in a script). Applying the analogy of the theatre, we keep in mind that in painting the activity of the painter combines – like in a puppet theatre – the roles of the author, director, and performing artist. The sociologist and social philosopher Simmel, as I indicated earlier, is a key reference for MyManet.

Case 4: The portrait can express the role of “the Other”.
In this case, the viewer must have reason to believe that the painter has presented himself or herself as seen from an alternative viewpoint. As Lüthy argues, Manet does this by modelling himself in the pose of Velazquez (see Figure 2). In a sense, Velazquez is looking over Manet’s shoulder in the painting “from the back” just like the second woman in Luncheon on the Grass takes the view from backstage. But there is more to it. As I try to show shortly, Manet himself is looking “from the back”.
Here the point is that the painter looking in the mirror (or at a photograph) may take “the role of the other” and try to communicate something about himself or herself, showing not only what one sees, but showing what exists with clues in the painting. Manet consistently avoids “telling stories”, whether about other persons or himself. We expect that “the Other” will appear in his self-portrait only as the formal option of an alternative view, not as some more or less revealing information about his inner mental life.

As suggested above, Manet deliberately shows what he sees, i.e. the mirror image.
Except, the painting right hand holding the brush is not clearly depicted!
This has provoked interpretations by Fried, Wittmann, Lüthy, and others that Manet tries to show “realistically” his fast moving hand making bold brush strokes. He cannot paint it clearly – this “speed-model” holds – because he is moving his hand too fast. Wittmann offers additionally the view – the “close-up model” – that when moving his hand toward the mirror image it comes too close to be focused sharply.
I think both interpretations are not tenable:

The “speed-model” – as I like to call it here – conflicts with the overall impression of the painting.
Manet is clearly striking a pose, probably trying to simulate Velazquez. There is nothing hasty about it, not in his self-portrait and not in the model of Velazquez (see Figure 2). When painting any model, whether somebody else or your mirror image, you want the model to keep the pose, you study the pose, imprint it in your short-term memory, turn your eyes to the painting, and try to make the appropriate marks on the canvas correcting the painted image while doing it. Your head may be turning a bit and perhaps the body, too, but your hand “waits” until you secured an impression and turn to the painting.
A problem arises, when you try – like Manet – painting yourself in the pose of reaching with the brush hand toward the canvas. Still, there is no need to be quick, you just turn and move your hand toward the mirror creating the image of your hand close to the “canvas”. The problem is that in reaching out toward the mirror the mirrored hand also reaches out toward the “back” of the mirror plane and your brush hand will cover up its image! As Manet’s painting shows, you might only see your fingertips, since your eyes are somewhat to the left of the hand.

Figure 3 tries to reproduce the stage of painting and, then, the stage of leaning over to the left to create the mirror image with Manet’s brush hand close to the mirror plane. The mirror image follows his movement, and the hand covers its own image.

As to the “close-up model”, in this movement his mirrored hand never gets closer to his eyes than the mirror. So, we have no basis to assume a blurred perception of the brush hand.

Figure 3: Diagram of Manet painting
and Manet leaning to the left to move his brush hand close to the “canvas”/mirror.

In the movement, Manet has to be careful not to come too close to the mirror with his other hand holding the palette. Apparently, he was not careful enough, since the tips of the three brushes have touched the mirror surface. Being the true realist, he truthfully paints the three little dots – show what one sees!

The three dots, now indicate the mirror surface in the painting – although Manet does not show the mirror explicitly, say, by showing the frame. Manet is playing games with us, again.

Another problem arises with depicting the eyes. Manet is close to his mirror image – remember the three dots – and in this near distance one cannot look at both eyes at the same instant. Manet has to focus either on the left eye (his illuminated right eye) or on the right eye (his left eye in the shadow). Lüthy (2006, p.194) calls the left eye the “active eye” because it actively engages with the viewer, and the other eye the “passive eye” being only looked at by the viewer.

But Manet has again an optical problem. Looking at the active eye, he gets an impression of his gaze to the assumed viewer, but he cannot see his passive eye clearly. Shifting his focus to the passive eye, this eye is not passive anymore but actively looking at him!
In the painting, we now see a little cross-eyed Manet, since being the truthful realist he shows what he sees – just painting first one eye and then the other.

At this point, Manet is clearly leaving a naturalistic realism and accentuates what exists but cannot be seen by him when looking at the viewer with his presented, active eye. The eye in the shadow is somewhat enlarged and the face appears to be a little more frontal. The “other Manet” is looking at him – and at the viewer who shifts the focus to this “other eye”. We are reminded of the too large woman in the back of Luncheon on the Grass or of  The Absinthe Drinker representing Manet himself in the background of The Old Musician.

We return to the question why Manet is painting these self-portraits so late in his career.
Most interpretations refer to the increasing health issues which made him reflect more on his mortality, and, in fact, lead to his death only a few years later. I like to propose an interpretation which follows up on the remark by Rubin cited above, namely, that Manet wanted to reassert his version of realism in view of the growing success of impressionism and to return to the “dialogue of gazes” (Rubin) realized eventually in his last masterpiece.

The self-portrait can be understood as an impressionist painting if taken literally – painting your impressions or what you see. But Manet is deliberately showing the mirror image, not – as Fried suggests – because he wanted to show that his quick impressionistic style does not leave the time for reversing the image (1996, p. 397). Manet is playing games with this “realism of visual perception” and demonstrates his own “realism of the body” by showing the inconsistencies arising in the attempt to reduce the world to the visual image.
This emphasis on his self-critical realism against the impressionist explains also, why Manet is referring to Velazquez again after avoiding citations of the Spanish master in the 1870ies.

Manet does not even show the mirror, because it poses no genuine problem for him. For Manet, “there is no mirror to be penetrated” – as Pierre Courthion puts it – “Manet was not a painter of impressions, but of composed instants” (2004, p.33). His art is a “space inhabited by mankind – it is the poetry of space in painting” (p. 35).

I think even his self-portraits testify to the influence of Manet’s compositional scheme. So let us take a closer look at other paintings following Luncheon on the Grass where the influence is more explicit.

See you next week!

Manet, Baudelaire, and Realistic Formalism (P 11)

By

On June 4, 2021

In Edouard Manet

Charles Baudelaire is said to have influenced Manet to become the painter of modern life.
Modern life is essentially a question of content or what to paint.
How to paint is more a question of form.
Did they agree on what to paint as a realist and how to paint as a realist?
Or even on the meaning of realism?

Clearly, they were close friends and Baudelaire visited Manet almost daily at the time when he created his first masterpieces like Luncheon on the Grass. However, they seem to have great discussions about painting without agreeing on how to do it. Baudelaire reached some prominence as an art critic, but he never valued the work of his friend in a publication.
Although Manet included him in his painting Music in the Tuileries Garden (1862), Baudelaire did not return the favour by declaring him to be The Painter of Modern Life (the title of his famous essay). He chose the popular illustrator Constantin Guys as his example.
Why?

Figure 1:  Painting modern life –
three examples from Constantin Guys and Edouard Manet

Manet liked Guys and his illustrations of modern life. As examples of their works in Figure 1 show, Manet might even have taken some of his inspirations from Guys. There is no historical evidence for these cases, but we know that Manet loved to integrate all kinds of material from “high” academic and “low” popular art into his works.
Baudelaire was certainly aware of that. Again, why did he choose Guys and not Manet?

As David Carrier argues, there is no denying that Baudelaire anticipated impressionism as the art of depicting modern life, but did he influence Manet’s art? T.J. Clark in his influential book on Manet “The Painting of Modern Life” (1986) sees a strong bond between the two. Carrier, however, holds that he “does not convincingly link Manet’s painting with Baudelaire’s writing” (1996, p.53).

Carrier cites numerous art historians noting that Baudelaire did not acknowledge the art of Manet. Their explanations vary; however, he finds their explanations unconvincing (p. 50-1).
He goes on to discuss the merits of Baudelaire’s theory of beauty with “the two components of beauty, the absolute beauty of classical art and the relative beauty of fashion, (and) the pleasure we derive from their unity” (p.54).
But he does not pose the somewhat obvious question whether Manet simply had different ideas about painting, and that these ideas were at odds both with Baudelaire and with impressionism.

In the previous Post 10, I tried to show that Manet had an own understanding of realism which deviated from impressionism. Now, we see that his concept is different from Baudelaire’s.
There are agreements, but there are also crucial differences. Unfortunately, Baudelaire wrote extensively on his views, while we have to rely on Manet’s paintings to understand his approach.

Manet certainly agrees with Baudelaire on the political and ethical dimension of realism:
A painter of modern life should show “what exists and what one sees” including the “ugly or evil” (see previous Post). Guys – as the examples demonstrate – is a realist in this sense. Velazquez – Manet’s idol – also painted both beautiful and virtuous and “ugly or evil” people. This is about realism as a content showing modern life.
But Manet does not see himself primarily as a reporter of modern life like Guys, the illustrator.
He also does not aim for a “pictorial poetry of the middle class’s better self”, as Césare Graña somewhat disrespectfully describes the way impressionism showed the life and leisure in modern Paris (2019).
Manet shares with Baudelaire a sincere search for a new approach to painting criticising both the established “idealism” of the academy and of the naturalistic “realism” of Courbet. But he disagrees on the principles of a new realism – on the aesthetic form of realism.

In my view, Manet detects, on the one hand, too much of traditional idealism and romanticism in Baudelaire’s theory of beauty.  Manet admires the Old Masters and wants to continue their tradition, but he also is a strong critic of the conventional principles of painting. The question of new principles is not answered by a criticism of established ways, one has to demonstrate a new way, and Courbet’s realism is not the answer for Manet.

On the other hand, looking at the modern ways of expressing a sense of beauty in fashion and popular art, is important to understanding contemporary concepts of beauty. Manet clearly has a love for modern fashion, in his own way of dressing as well as in the dresses of others, especially of women. However, Manet sees a great gap between Baudelaire’s eternal principles of “high” art and contemporary expressions of “low” art in fashion. How can we identify and paint “what exists” in the fleeting impressions of “what we see” in fashion?
This gap is not filled by Baudelaire’s theory: a new consciousness of the beauty in modern life does not, in itself, lead the way to principles of a new modern art.

Manet wants to take a fresh look at the reality presented to him in modern life. And he wants to look as a painter, not as a novelist or poet or composer; his medium are the means of a painter, not language and not the sound of music.
Convinced like Baudelaire that there are more general, enduring elements or structures in aesthetic experience, he wants to concentrate on essential elements and not on fleeting impressions.
And Manet probable was convinced that the concept of beauty carried a strong Romantic bias into Baudelaire’s position which he wanted to avoid. Although, he admired beauty wherever he encountered it as an essential attribute of the person. The beauty may be expressed in the latest fashion including cosmetics, even in costumes on stage, but in an authentic way, not as a mere cosmetic surface. Realism shows beauty as well as the “ugly or evil”.

Among Manet’s principles in the search for a new realism were the realization of simplicity, sincerity, and naiveté.
In view of MyManet, he found a model for the principles and practical performance of painting in the puppet theatre. The focus on essential elements may be visualized by “deconstructing” the Luncheon on the Grass in components like in Figure 2.

Figure 2:  “Deconstruction” of Luncheon on the Grass  as elements in a puppet theatre

Such structural elements – not necessarily the elements shown in Figure 2 –  are his “words” and “sentences” which he aims to organize into a picture. He does not dissolve reality into impressions reflected by a surface but into structural elements “hanging in space” and suggesting bodily and material objects. The objects in the painting are experienced as present, almost touchable. They are organized in pictorial space so as to suggest that they can hide other objects from view, create a sense of space, and imply a wider environment beyond the picture space.

Manet does not want to create an illusion of reality, but a “reasoned image” (see previous Post):
The structural elements and their composition are designed in ways showing reality as a pattern in the painterly medium. The unity of the composition should – in Manet’s view – not be achieved by a “story” explaining what can be seen; the reality of the painting should speak for itself.

These patterns are embedded in the reality around him, but, typically, they cannot immediately be “seen”, grasp and understood without attention and intensive observation. The intensity of Manet’s painting process has been described by many of his models as well as his practice of scraping off the achieved state and starting again in the next session. Manet wanted to capture the essence of his model – if possible in one session presenting a living image rather than a dead copy. This is easily misunderstood as an impressionist attempt to capture the specific moment (like Monet painting the light on haystacks at different times of the day). I think that Manet was trying to discover and present the typical pattern which was showing itself in a specific session clearly – or not. In an attempt to sort out accidental elements he started all over again.

As a consequence, Manet’s models found the session quite demanding and intense, and the focus on underlying, enduring patterns arrested the figures and their activities.
The patterns cannot be “shown” in a painting without experimenting with a guiding scheme and developing corresponding skills and practices. Not surprisingly, Manet preferred working in the studio consulting various sources for his compositions.
This approach toward discovery of underlying patterns by experimenting is not taken by idealism – where patterns are “eternal” and guiding rules – nor by Courbet’s realism – where patterns are observed “in nature” and represented.

Lüthy describes Manet as taking the “position of an impossible Third”: The position of a “realistic formalism”.
He combines reflective imagination with a creative practice which is not “representation” of reality but an experiment. “In this experiment questions of form and content, artificiality and realism merge into one another” (2003, p.116).
The experiment is realized not just in one painting but in a series of pictures and studies with Manet trying to find a satisfactory solution. This is why Lüthy tries to identify structural elements and the variations of their composition over a series of Manet’s paintings.

As reflected in the concept of “reasoned image”, this approach is not entirely new but characterizes the scientific methodology as it developed until the beginning of the 19th century.
Lüthy is aware of the importance of science, however, he tends to refer to scientific insights from physiology and psychology employed by impressionists to express subjective experience of modern life in their art.
Manet is, in a sense, more oriented toward scientific objectivity. In science, subjective experience is questioned as endangering objectivity. If realism claims to represent objective reality, it has to look beyond the immediate impressions to discover the more enduring structures of experience.
In terms of the psychology of painting, Manet is more a cognitive psychologist (like – later –  the cognitive Gestalt psychologists), while the impressionists are influenced by the psychology of perception of Gustav Fechner (1801-1887) and Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920).
In philosophical terms, Manet is a practicing phenomenologist – we know virtually nothing about his philosophical inclinations – who tries to discover the inherent structures of experience rather than a positivist who takes sensory evidence as given.

The analogy with science should not be taken too far. Manet clearly sees himself as an artist, not as an applied scientist of any kind or discipline.

But there is another interesting parallel to the situation of science.
The insight into the problematic impact of subjectivity of the scientists themselves produced toward the end of the century the need to control subjective influences by methodology, both on the level of rational discourse and controlled observation.
Manet seems to be aware that his rejection of idealism and naturalism raises the question of how to justify his impossible third position of “realistic formalism” (Lüthy). The impressionist option – wholeheartedly embracing the expression of the individual artist’s subjectivity – was not his ideal. But conformity with established traditions, not only in art, had largely lost its legitimacy in modern society.

One way of justification is the belief that – at least in the long run – art tradition will reveal the value of his art; that is why he all his life sought the recognition of his art by institutions of art – like museums and public exhibitions. However, the acceptance of the “authority” of art traditions had to be critical, which means for Manet that elements of previous art should prove their value in contemporary experimentation.

Another way is the acceptance by a critical art community – by the avant-garde. Therefore, Manet sought the critical discussion of art among artists and valued the view of others.

A third way – as argued in MyManet – is Manet’s “going social” in his painting practice by deliberately implicating the viewer, the model, the “Other” and the “Big Other” in his paintings.
This way, he turned his practice into an “open space” reminding himself of taking a self-critical position and inviting others to participate in the experiment.
The medium achieving this participation for Manet is, especially, the gaze of the persons in his painting, not only the gaze toward the viewer, but also the gaze from the back or outward, creating a social space through painting.

To what extent institutions, avant-garde communities, or participative practices can or should determine what is art – and what not – is a discussion accompanying the development of modern art from the beginning. We will return to that question; here, I only want to point out that experimentation in science and experimentation in art, creative practices and consolidating institutions in both realms have to be distinguished because they are guided by different principles.

The primary environment for Manet’s art was his own studio. Figure 3 tries to show how the studio worked as an open space including art of the past, own paintings, models, anticipated or even present viewers (the girl). In the upper right hand corner, the diagram indicates that Manet may be thinking of elements in his The Old Musician (see Post 7). The lines indicate the communication with the gazes and gestures of figures in the painting and the model.

Figure 3: A diagram of Manet’s studio

This situation for the painting process was difficult or impossible to create and to sustain in “open air” – Manet preferred the studio.
The practice also depended on close contacts with preferred models, interested colleagues, and the experience of modern urban life in the art community. Manet missed his Paris whenever he travelled and returned to create his major works from drawings and sketches.

Institutions, communities, and participative practices are social forms in Manet’s scheme which we will encounter again in the discussion.
The creation of a painting is, for Manet, an experiment that runs over a series of paintings. We have looked at pictures that preceded Luncheon on the Grass. At this point, it seems appropriate to look at some other paintings following this “programmatic” painting to see how Manet is varying his scheme.

See you next week!

Manet’s Realism (P 10)

By

On May 28, 2021

In Edouard Manet

Manet considered himself to be a realistic painter – but what is a realistic painter?
Even worse, there were (and are) different versions of realism.

Courbet saw himself – and critics admired him – as the most prominent realist painter of his time, initiating the realist movement after the 1848 French revolution.
But Manet, a decade younger, distanced his art (and himself personally by keeping away from Courbet’s circles) from Courbet’s naturalism.
Novelists like Baudelaire and Zola initiated a new realism in literature and poetry, but it seems that Manet never agreed with their interpretation of his art.

And then, there is the final question of “Installation My Manet”:

Question 7: What happens to Realism while using an abstract formal scheme?

As the caricature by Honoré Daumier suggests, a “Battle of Schools – Realism versus Classic Idealism” was waged already before Manet created his version of realism.

Figure 1:   Battle of Schools – Realism versus Classic Idealism
by Honoré Daumier (1855)

In this battle, the realists developed new styles of painting in opposition to traditional academic conventions,
choosing topics from modern life and contemporary landscapes rather than from history and mythology,
and siding with the political goals of workers and peasants in the new republic.

The philosopher and anarchist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon – Courbet’s friend whom he portrayed – is quoted as saying: “Any figure, whether beautiful or ugly, can fulfil the ends of art”
and the poet Desnoyers added (cited in Rewald 1961, p. 28):

“Realism, without being a defence of the ugly or evil, has the right to show what exists and what one sees.”

Manet – himself from the upper middle class – supported all his life the republican cause, although the political revolutions and wars of his time (Manet is a contemporary of Karl Marx) are reflected only in few of his works.
As mentioned before, his friend Edmond Duranty revitalized the tradition of puppet theatre in the early 1860ies with realism as a framework for art, public education, and entertainment.
Realism, thus, had a distinct ethical and political dimension.

Unfortunately, Manet never articulated his own understanding of realism, so we rely on his pictures to reconstruct his concept of realistic painting.
To make things even more complicated, his painter friends and followers – Frederic Bazille, Gustave Caillebotte, Mary Cassatt, Edgar Degas, Claude Monet, Berthe Morisot, Camille Pissarro, Alfred Sisley, and others – developed into the school of impressionism.
They saw him as their mentor and leader, but Manet never called himself an impressionist and did not exhibit with the impressionists.

In art history, however, at least since John Rewald’s The History of Impressionism (1946), Manet is usually regarded as an impressionist or at least as bridging between realism and impressionism. Impressionism is seen as the new stage of realism based on scientific insights: on the rapidly growing disciplines of physiology and psychology and their application to understanding modern urban life and the nature of visual experience.
Robert Herbert (1988, p.33) counts Manet among the impressionists and both under naturalism, since Manet like the others paints his impressions of Parisian life.
Michael Lüthy (2003, p.73ff) rejects this view and insists that Manet is not an impressionist and misunderstood as realist, at least in the sense of naturalism.

So, what is Manet’s realism and how does it differ from impressionism?
After all, there is a world of differences between Gustave Caillebotte and Claude Monet (for a comparison: Herbert 1988, p.20-32). Does Manet fit somewhere in between?

Figure 2: What is realism? Comparing Caillebotte, Monet and Manet

Interestingly, I found the most convincing argument not by art historians (not yet?) but in the history of the philosophy of science. Here, Daston and Galison (2007) researched the meaning of the concept of objectivity in natural science since about 1600 – the time of Diego Velazquez.
Their examples are visualizations of natural objects for research purposes. Natural scientists and artists were cooperating in depicting objects like botanic plants, animals, or the surface of the earth.
Their goal was truth-to-nature in drawing or etching objects like they really are, or naturalism.

From the start, they had the problem that in reality each object of a certain kind, say, an orchid or butterfly, was a little different from the other. There were accidental variations and the natural scientist had to advise the artist which deviations were relevant, and which were not.
Truth-to-nature did not mean to show an “ideal” flower; it simply meant that there is a general type which “exists” while variations just happen. Moreover, it was common practice to show the blossom and the fruits of a given flower on the same depicted plant, although this image could clearly not “exist” in reality.
Again, the scientist decided what to show and what not and the artist showed a “reasoned image” (p.42).
The image was objective because it showed what the scientist knew to “exist”.
If the artist got it wrong, these deviations were only subjective errors, as every knowledgeable person could “see”.

The terms of objectivity and subjectivity, in this sense, were introduced only later. (I recommend to read the fascinating story how the meaning in philosophy completely reversed!)
For our understanding of Manet, it is sufficient to recognize that this original meaning of “true-to-nature” persisted in the concept of naturalism in art.
While naturalism would only show what can be “seen”, realism would show what science claimed to “exist”.

But in science and philosophy things changed around the beginning of the 19th century:
     subjectivity acquired the meaning of “existing according to theory” or “universal forms of experience”;
     objectivity referred to “merely empirical sensations” or “merely objective nature”.
Thus, the meaning of the terms changed completely!
However, there was no basic problem with understanding that abstract schemes are realized in our subjective ways to perceive the world. Following the philosopher Immanuel Kant, we all use subjective schemata which enable us to “see” what “exists”.
Artists like Courbet could show what exists realistically, while scientist could rely on their senses observing phenomena and discovering theories.

But then, in the early 19th century, a number of developments interacted and shattered this view.
Political, economic, technological, and social revolutions – the transition to modernity – impacted on society.
An important effect was an increasing individualism supporting concepts of subjectivity linked to  individual freedom and capacity to reason.
That was welcomed in art:
The transition lead to the idea of “art for art’s sake” or the autonomy of art, and to the expression of the artist’s freedom and subjectivity in art.
The effect in science was ambiguous. Enhanced subjectivity strengthened the scientific self, but it also resulted in increasing awareness of the ways subjectivity interfered with objective science. Especially, research in physiology and psychology demonstrated how researchers themselves were prone to misperceptions and bias.

“What exists” (objectively) and “what one sees” (subjectively) drifted conceptually apart!

In science,
methods were adopted which produced “objective images”, images as independent as possible from any interference by humans, both scientist and artists. The paradigmatic case is photography, which to some extent substituted the artist’s drawings and engravings. Objective procedures were introduced which, in effect, controlled scientific subjectivity by rational rigor on the level of observation, measurement, and visualization (“what one sees”) as well as on the level of theory construction (“what is known to exist”).

In art,
the new insights of physiology and psychology – research on the perception of light and colour, for instance –  sparked a new awareness for the appearance of the world (“what one sees”), both in landscape painting and in the depiction of contemporary urban life. Impressionism, and later expressionism, can be understood in part as an exploitation of the results of this natural research, while, at the same time, claiming the full freedom for the expression of artistic subjectivity – Impressionism seen as new naturalism.
Both, Caillebotte with his exaggeration of perspective in modern urban planning and the presentation of fashionable people on the bridge, and Monet by showing the elusive play of light on the same bridge, will count as impressionists in this sense.

But what about Manet?

The railway bridge appears only at the right edge of the painting; a perspective into the picture is barred by an iron grill and hidden in white smoke, presumably from a passing train; in the centre and forefront, we find two people – a woman and and girl – who strangely command our attention, as we, the viewers, seem to have disturbed the woman reading . We are very close, but the woman is not really looking at us. The girl is holding on to an iron railing looking into the white smoke barring the background from view  as the railing barres her (and us) from moving back toward the railroad. We are together “boxed in” in the foreground not really looking at each other and seeing little beyond the railing.
Unlike the scenes of Caillebotte and Monet, who present to us their subjective view of  urban life, Manet’s scene is strangely “staged”. He makes the viewer “step back” to look at the scene more objectively by the tension created between spatial closeness and social distancing by the woman’s avoidance of a direct gaze.
Is this naturalism depicting a certain scene? Or impressionism of “what one sees”? Or realism of “what exists”? In what sense, is Manet the realist he claims to be?

Just as the concepts of objectivity and subjectivity have changed, the term realism changes and still changes – just think of modern hyperrealism.
So, we have to ask what the realistic concern was for Manet at the time.
He did not want to depict every detail. In the spirit of the tradition of drawing and engraving, he opted for simplicity and concentration on the essential elements with sincerity.
Manet practiced printing techniques himself and used extensively engravings rather than the originals of Old Masters as examples – like in Luncheon.
He extracted “structural elements” – as Lüthy describes it – and combined them in own compositions.
We have already identified some of these elements:
the narrow “stage”, the violation of perspective, the implication of a space before the painting by gazes toward the viewer, the flattening of figures and elements by direct light from the front eliminating modelling and shading, the arrangement of somewhat isolated elements and shapes, the collage character of the composition.
Realism in a narrow naturalistic sense presenting “what one sees” is clearly not his goal.

His realism aims at “what exists” but may not be “seen” readily:
Manet is focusing on “seeing others and being seen by others”, which in a social situation is a very real phenomenon!
The “structural elements” are elements of social forms which Manet presents just like the engravings in natural science, like combining the essential elements of a flower regardless of whether they can be observed in natural settings in exactly this way. His accent is on the more abstract forms which “exist” in a certain kind of situation rather then in the accidental aspects of “what one can see” in a specific case.
Manet creates “reasoned images” of painting as a social situation with interrelating gazes.
The figures and scenes appear somehow arrested, because Manet wants to capture them in an essential configuration, not in the fleeting, subjectively experienced moment characteristic for impressionism or in the accidental “freeze” of a photography producing “objective images untouched by human hands” but typically full of irrelevant elements.

So, Manet’s realism consists – in MyManet – on “showing what exists” in the situation of painting.
His special focus is on the configuration of real gazes and gestures relating persons. These configurations will change with the setting depicted, so we should expect variations in other paintings than Luncheon on the Grass – as the example of The Railway above shows.
The composition of the painting will not produce a naturalistic image of “what anyone can see”, but the composition of a “reasoned image” of essential elements incorporating insight into “what one knows”. Still, Manet is a realistic painter and not illustrating science. We have to come back to the difference between realism in art and in science.

At this point, I just want to link his realism again to the puppet theatre. As we have seen, the production of “reasoned images” required a close cooperation between the scientist and the artist. Unlike a theatre performance with writers, directors, and actors, each with their own agendas, the puppeteer is in command over the production. Like the scientist cooperates with the artist, the painter has, however, to cooperate with the model to sustain the social form he wants to present in the painting.
Therefore, it is not surprising
– that Manet had his quarrels with professional models and their “unrealistic” poses at the art academy,
– that he preferred to use the same models which were able and patient to realize a “reasoned imagination”,
and
– that he apparently had a great respect for his models and their dignity even if they were waitresses in a bar.
This social empathy he shared with Velazquez and it qualified him as a social leader of his own circle of painter friends.
(Feminist art historians have a lot of criticism for male artists (not only) of the time – like Courbet or Degas and their treatment of models – they are remarkably restrained in the case of Manet.)

“Reasoned images” are not merely formal compositions of abstract “structural elements”.
They claim to show reality or content of real life.
The new realism in literature of Baudelaire and Zola claims the same.
The puppet theatre makes the same claim.
We have to follow up on this aspect of content in Manet’s paintings.

So, see you next week!

Page 2 of 3

Previous

Next

Powered by WordPress & Theme by Anders Norén