Category: Edouard Manet Page 1 of 3

After Manet spend about six months in a clinic being subjected to a therapy which he experienced as an “atrocious torture” he painted an intriguing little Interior of a Café (Richardson 1982, p.112). The scene Interior of a Café follows several earlier works which Manet sketched and painted in 1878/79
– but it is strikingly different!

Figure 1: Three scenes in a café by Edouard Manet

(A) Café-Concert (1878) (B) The Waitress (1879)

While in the earlier paintings – like Café-Concert or The Waitress – Manet appears to be close and sympathetically “rubbing shoulders with his subjects” (Rubin 2010, p.206), the Interior is more detached, and the place exudes isolation, loneliness and absence. The empty chair to the right bears Manet’s signature – certainly not a coincidence. And to the left, there is a strange, ghostly figure sitting at the table.

The art historians Richardson and Rubin do not comment on this difference to earlier scenes; they interpret the painting as another example of Manet’s engagement in modern life in Paris’ cafés. Both authors note, however, that a large mirror in the background seems to anticipate the mirror in A Bar at the Folies-Bergère.
As discussed in the previous posts, the Bar may be interpreted as a personal retrospective on his works. The Interior appears to sketch out some first ideas about his last masterpiece. If this is the case, we are encouraged to have a closer look at the Interior in view of Manet’s scheme as discovered in the Bar in the previous posts. Once we “see” not only a loose sketch of people in a café, we “see” Manet exploring elements of his scheme, looking back, and preparing the Bar.

Some puzzling elements in the Interior ask for an explanation. For instance:

Why is the chair empty, or, who should we expect to sit there? Manet himself?
The lady in the foreground seems to be looking at the gentleman at her table to the left. But is she? Her gaze is somewhat empty, not the least, because this figure is almost a “ghost” – faceless, only indicated in blue-grey, and cut off by the frame.
What is role of this “ghost” in the painting? Is he looking at her or rather following the gazes of the other men to the right presumably looking toward the stage?
Where is the waiter looking? Into the right side of the mirror or toward the stage? Is there a mirror?

Mysterious “absence” (empty chair), “darkness” (man at the table), and confusing mirror images (gaze of waiter) trouble the viewer when taking a closer look. Is this a scene which Manet was observing in a café or are we confronted with a puzzle or composition playing with absent pieces?

First, let us take up the question of the mirror (Figure 1C above).
The mirror in the middle ground – divided by a column to the right of the centre with a waiter standing next to it – is somewhat strange. It closes off the café in the middle ground and, at the same time, opens up a view to a large room “beyond the mirror”– actually behind the viewer – with what appears to be rows of visitors or an audience in a far background. Mirrors were (and still are) a common feature in cafés and appear also in earlier paintings by Manet and others (e.g. Degas and Caillebotte). Still, the connection with the reflection in the Bar – painted a year later – is suggestive.

On the left side of the column,
the mirror shows us the background behind the viewer standing apparently quite close to the woman and looking down on her. Like the gentleman at the table, the viewer would be placed toward the left edge and is not anymore reflected in the mirror, because the wall is not quite aligned with the picture plane. This creates a vanishing point far out to the right behind the stage and pulls the gaze of the viewer in that direction (black lines in Figure 2A).

Figure 2A.: Perspectives in the Interior of a Café

The mirror seems to reflect the woman at the table supporting the impression of a mirror and suggesting a perspective in the interior as indicated in Figure 2A above. The mirror also shows an open space above the woman, presumably the open space in front of the stage on the right. But the reflection is strangely empty, almost an “abyss” (like in the Bar to the left of the barmaid and similarly indicating people at tables or on a balcony beyond).
Strangely, the person in front of the mirror on a bench (to the right of the column at the edge of the painting) is not reflected in the mirror to the left of the column.

On the right side of the column,
the waiter and three sitting people appear to be looking at the event on stage beyond the frame. But where exactly are they sitting?
The wall with a dark panel beneath the mirror on the left side does not continue on the right side. Instead, there are the rear benches with those people facing the stage. But the rear bench is not aligned with the perspective of the room as mirrored on the left side.
In fact, the shading underneath the empty table suggests that the bench continues almost aligned with the wall (the angle in which the bench “should” go is indicated by the dotted line and arrow in Figure 2A above).

This has the effect:
If we focus on the right side of the painting, we don’t seem to see a mirror at all! The three people in the audience to the right are not reflected.
This again makes sense, since the gaze of the waiter is now unobstructed by any mirror and directed to the stage.
But then the mirror on the left side is deceiving – or there is no mirror to the left either.

Manet is playing games with the perspectives and with the viewer by suggesting a mirror on the left side and an open view to the space in front of the stage on the right side.

Let us look at the problem of the mirror with the help of diagrams, keeping in mind that we don’t know what the actual situation in this café really was and what liberties Manet took in representing the scene.
Our aim will be to learn something about the painting that helps us to understand its mediating role between previous café scenes and the Bar.

In Figure 2A above, we focus on the left side where the mirror reflects the woman identified by a greenish spot (her dress) and a black spot (her hat). Connecting the two faces we get a sense of the perspective (black lines) taking as a further lead the two columns and the white table the waiter is leaning on.
Manet seems to place a vanishing point behind the face of the woman in the mirror locating the empty chair in the “spotlight” of her gaze from the mirror. The chair is turned toward her and seems to be “looking back”.
The horizontal line gives further structure by connecting to the head of the waiter and of another gentleman on the far right.

An additional dynamic of the composition – indicated by red lines – leads the viewer’s gaze to follow the gaze of the woman to the ghostly face on the left and then to the gaze of the waiter picking up the general direction of the gazes of the three patrons on the right toward the stage.
We cannot be sure where the faceless “ghost” is looking. His gaze may be directed at the woman, instead, but the viewer is clearly induced to move his or her gaze along this trajectory.

Figure 2B: Dimming the left mirror in the Interior

In Figure 2B, I have dimmed the left mirror. Now the view on the right becomes ambiguous as pointed out above. The gaze of the waiter, the large figure with the top hat, the backside of the benches, all seem to indicate that we look directly into an open space in front of the stage – not into a mirror continuing from the one on the left. But this would be incongruous with the image in the left mirror and the indication of a row of visitors running across the background of the painting.

Figure 2C: Dimming mirrors on both sides of the column in the Interior

In Figure 2C, I have tried to amplify this point by dimming also the right mirror. Now it becomes apparent that the patron on the far right would be sitting this side of the mirror while the other two are reflections.
The problem is that the person on this side is not reflected in the mirror. Moreover, he is cramped into a tight space next to the mirror because the bench does not follow the perspective; the angle (arrow) is too small. Additionally, the white light beneath the table pushes the yellow bench clearly to the back, more aligned with the dark panel on the left.

All this supports the dynamics of the red trajectory, but it makes the mirror images and perspectives of the café inconsistent.

Figure 2D: The “real” scene in the Interior (with dimmed mirrors)

In Figure 2D, keeping the dimmed mirrors, we see (with the help of some rough photoshopping) what the situation “really” might have been.
Now the bench follows the perspective, the patron to the right has some space and is reflected in the left mirror as a shade above the women’s head. Underneath the table we see the bench angling out into the room.

But this “reality” comes with a cost. The right mirror is closing off the background to the right more effectively, blocking the gaze of the waiter on the other men. His gaze loses some of its force, since the gaze of the “ghost” is now more likely to follow the gaze of the patron to the right towards the stage on this side (red line). And perhaps most importantly, the table with the empty chair loses much of its dominant position, cramped up next to the bench.

So, it seems that Manet knew what he was doing when he created an ambiguous right side, neglected the laws of perspective, put the empty chair in a “spotlight”, and supported a dynamic trajectory in the composition toward a stage somewhat “beyond the mirror”.

The point here is not to demonstrate that Manet manipulates perspective to create a compositional effect; we saw this in other paintings.
The point is that these elements – mirrors playing with perspectives and with gazes of persons including the viewer, introducing “ghostly” figures, leaving and “abyss” in front of a stage beyond the picture frame – resurface in the A Bar at the Folies-Bergère. This makes the little Interior a work mediating between the previous café paintings focusing on modern life and his final masterpiece reflecting on his work in a multi-layered composition.
This means, moreover, that it is meaningful to apply Manet’s scheme to the Interior, and to identify the triad of persons (First, Second, Third), the Other, and the Big Other beyond the picture space (see Post 26).

Obviously, the First, looking at and engaging the viewer is missing – there is an empty chair!
Considering that Manet typically engages the viewer, like in “The Waitress” in Figure 1 above, this is surprising and invites the interpretation that Manet sees himself “missing” and missing “looking at the viewer” in painting. After the stay in the clinic, he realizes that soon he will not be able to enjoy the bars and cafés with his friends anymore.

The Second, the person looking across the picture space and establishing the social space, is clearly the woman in the foreground. But – unlike the man on the right in the triad in Luncheon on the Grass gesturing to the other two – she has only a ghostlike figure sitting at her table.
She is turning her back to the empty chair, isolating it further by her own position left of the centre . Her connection with the missing First is only indirectly by way of her mirror image located at the source of the “spotlight” on the empty chair.
Her unfocused facial expression only motivates the viewer to follow her gaze to the “ghost” and to the waiter’s gaze who seems to be attracted by the event on stage.

Even more puzzling is the role of the Third, the person directing his gaze beyond the picture space toward the Big Other, the external “authority” in Manet’s scheme.
In effect, the “ghost” and the waiter share this position creating the red trajectory across the painting toward the stage beyond.
But this trajectory is unstable, as we have seen above. The origin of the Third’s gaze in a faceless “ghost” makes us wonder if Manet is not only missing his life as a painter engaging with the viewer, but also missing the “authority” of painting which he always saw in the tradition of art. The gaze of the Third is now directed toward a stage which exists in an insecure space of conflicting mirror reflections.

Finally, the position of the Other, looking from the back at the triad, is taken by the mirror image of the woman. This element we find, in almost the same position, in the Bar (Post 26). This supports the interpretation of the Interior as an experiment with ideas for the Bar.

Returning to the questions above, we see how “absence” dramatically enters his work. It has been characteristic of his paintings by the openness of his compositions reaching beyond the picture space toward the viewer and other implied presences. It often found expression in the absent gaze of protagonists in his paintings. But now under the impact of deteriorating health the place from which he establishes the contact to his viewers – the gaze of the First – is empty.
After the Prussian-French War (1970-71) we can observe how Manet experiments with fewer actors in his scheme. We will return to these works in following posts. But now he is almost dissolving his characters in “missing” and “ghostly” figures turning away from each other in an ambiguous space. I find this little Interior somewhat depressing and expressing his deep sadness, while his final masterpiece – aimed to establish his position in the tradition of art – demonstrates his self-confidence as an artist.

The ”ghostly” greyish figure and the imposing dark area behind the figures at the table remind us of another aspect in Manet’s work, the “dark” and “mysterious” elements which seem to emerge from a “dark backstage” (see Post 28). We will turn to the “Dark” in Manet’s painting in the following post.

See you soon again!

Manet’s Theatre: Painting “On Stage” (P28)

By Richard Pieper

On June 6, 2022

In Edouard Manet

Manet is putting his figures “on stage”, so: how realistic is the scene unfolding on the canvas?
In our view on Manet’s A Bar at the Folies-Bergére, we have seen surrealistic elements questioning his self-claimed realism (Posts 25-27). He clearly arranged the basic scene in his studio and wanted the arrangement to represent the situation in the Folies-Bergére as realistically as possible. He even hired a barmaid from the place to model for the central figure. But then he experimented with the mirror violating optical laws within the painting with impossible reflections undermining a realistic interpretation.

Figure 1: Luncheon on the Grass “on stage”: The positions of chairs

Let us follow up on the image of a stage like in Figure 1. The play given is Luncheon on the Grass, and – since Manet is avoiding telling a “story”- let us assume the curtain has just opened and we only see the positions for the actors (call them: First, Second, Third and Other) marked by different chairs. In Figure 1 the red chair is placed for the First (the female nude), the blue chair expects the Second (a male) and the violet chair kind of looks off stage as the Third (another male), and the woman onlooking from the back – the “Other”- will sit on the green stool. A little bench (yellow) is added on front stage indicating the typical still life. The chairs are positioned and turned following the composition according to Manet’s scheme indicating the direction of gazes.

In Figure 2, the Luncheon is compared with three major paintings discussed earlier which Manet submitted to the Salon. In 1865, Christ Mocked by Soldiers was exhibited together with Olympia (painted already in 1863), Breakfast in the Atelier (1868) and The Balcony (1869) were presented together in 1869. Manet clearly wanted to make his claim as a leading painter of his time with those paintings.

For each painting, a little stage indicates the position of the chairs, and each painting is reduced to a little diagram describing the gazes of the central figures. The diagrams contain the four gazes, except Breakfast and Christ Mocked where the background figures – the green stools – are missing. In Breakfast the prominent white flowerpot may stand in for the fourth figure.

Figure 2 a-d: Variations of Manet’s Scheme “on stage” and reduced diagrams

a) Luncheon on the Grass (1863)

b) Christ Mocked by Soldiers (1865)

c) Breakfast in the Atelier (1868)

d) The Balcony (1869)

As the diagrams reveal, Manet is varying a basic scheme by changing the direction of the gazes and moving the position of chairs on stage, creating different painterly challenges:
On one level, these changes prompt changes in the composition, because the figures have to be balanced within the frame of the painting while their gazes produce their own “force fields” or a social space affecting the compositional balance.
On another level, we might link the composition to (possible) content.

Luncheon (Figure 2a) meets the viewer with a friendly direct gaze of the nude as First (red). Although the viewer is not directly invited to join, there is no embarrassment or rejection. The composition is open to the wider setting, even bridging to the viewer with the still life in the front. The fourth figure in the back (the “Other”; green) mirrors the position of the viewer, who might as well imagine standing there. We see a quite harmonic scene, although on closer inspection, we have the disquieting feeling that there is a potential for disruption, because the triad is not effectively communicating within the group and the onlooker is somehow looming too large. The diagram shows the tension between the – unexplained – inner divergence of the triad. Stability is induced from outside through the explicit relation to the viewer and the anchoring role of the figure in the back (more in Post 7-9).

Christ Mocked (Figure 2b) presents Jesus surrounded by figures emphasizing his vulnerable position as a human among humans (see Post 14). As the diagram shows, now the Third (purple) is placed in the centre, the First (red) is moved further back, and two figures create the unity of the group gazing at Jesus in the role of the Second (blue). The figure looking from the back at the group (green) is missing, unless we interpret one of the soldiers to the left as doubling in that role (like in The Drinkers by Velazquez; see Post 4). But there is a possible reason why Manet chose to introduce two Seconds. Placing the Third in the centre and the First behind him uses up the space on the narrow “stage”. Placing an onlooking other person behind the First would great a depth of the “stage” distracting from Christ. Thus, the back is closed off by a dark “backstage”, instead, pushing the figure of Christ closer to the viewer. The alternative view by the “other” is now taken by the other Second up front.
The interpretation of the gaze of the Third is no mystery in this case. Christ is obviously turning his gaze toward God, the ultimate “authority”, who also seems to illuminate the stage from above. And Manet did not forget the still life, here in the very front to the right. (The basic composition seems to be “stolen” again – see Post 14.)

Breakfast (Figure 2c) puts the Third on front stage almost into the viewer’s space: the young man is looking beyond the viewer as a youth might look into his future, detached from the male (“father”) and female (“mother”) figure in the middle ground. Since the young man is modelled by Manet’s son Leon, it is fair to assume that Manet was well aware of the uncertainties belabouring the boy in his passage to adulthood, created by the lack of an accepted “authority”. The painting is regarded by art historians as his most “enigmatic” (Rubin), although seeing it as variation of Manet’s scheme takes away much of the mystery (more in Posts 18 and 19).
Manet is experimenting moving the Third (purple) now frontstage even slightly before the still lives to the right (lemons) and the left (theatre requisites and the cat). The First (red) is again placed in the back. With the youth frontstage, this creates now an “empty stage” in the middle only partly occupied by the table. (By inserting his monogram on the carafe in the “empty” centre, Manet is certainly being ironic.) The Second (blue), the gentleman to the far right, has now to “fill the gap” by directing his gaze across the “stage”.
Comparing this again with Luncheon, we see that Manet is exaggerating a task the Second had already in the previous painting. There, looking between the other two, he was located somewhat out to the right, the outstretched arm helping to integrate the group. The triad is even more diverging than in Luncheon. Manet is “zooming in” on the triad and, at the same time, drawing the figures further apart. As in Christ Mocked, the onlooking “Other” (green) is missing, although the somewhat unmotivated and too large white flowerpot in the back to the left might be seen in that role. Rather than including the view from the back, the wall of the atelier closes the room toward the back (the “past” of the youth) pushing the young man even more toward the viewer or his future. The “enigmatic” and even unsettling experience of the viewer is certainly enhanced by the pitch-black coat of the Third almost punching a hole into the “empty stage”, with a black cat in the dark middle-ground, no less, reminding of Olympia.

The Balcony (Figure 2d) seems to violate the scheme, but Manet chances another experiment (Post 20). The Second (blue), the figure originally assigned to the role of integration within the painting, is now sitting front stage and looking outward to the left. But this figure is focusing her attention on somebody (or some event) which is unrepresented (white circle) but very present through the intensity of her gaze. She is not gazing “beyond” the scene implied by the painting (like a Third) but stretching the social space outside the picture space. The role of the Third (purple) is occupied by the gentleman behind her. The First (red) is standing shyly next to her (not to distract from the intensity of the Second). The scheme is completed by the boy (green) looking from the back barely noticeable in the dark background. (Again, all figures are identified as specific persons; prominently, Berthe Morisot – see Post 20).

The intense outward look of the Second including someone not represented creates a great tension, both on the level of composition and on the level of content.
On the level of composition, Manet copes with it by rather dramatic means: boxing the whole scene in on a balcony with glaring green shades and railing and closing it off with the darkness of the room in the back. The “stage” shrinks to hardly more than 2qm.
On the level of content, Manet allows the Second to stretch the setting of the triad out into public space. The entire scene on the balcony is floating on the border of the (dark) private space behind the figures and the public space in front of them – the audience. The viewer is engaged by the gaze of the First, but even more captured by the daring movement of the triad out and into open urban space – or the audience of the theatre.

The theme of Manet’s scheme has again changed and with it the content of the formal roles.
In Luncheon we found a rather intimate scene lacking, however, internal relations; in Christ Mocked the religious tradition promises guidance (although the vulnerable figure of Christ has to look up for it); in Breakfast any guidance for the youth looking into an open future was uncertain; and in The Balcony the integration of the triad is questioned by turning to others in public space. Moving the “chairs” on the “stage” opened for Manet new avenues for interpretation – form and content interact.
The analogy of the theatre with changing positions of chairs helps to explain the somewhat strange lack of movement or activity in his paintings. Manet focuses on relations between the actors before they start enacting a “story”, or as they pause to acknowledge the presence of an audience. Manet was over his entire career in close friendship with prominent writers like Baudelaire, Zola, and Mallarmé, and kept close relations with the theatre world. He was perfectly aware what it means to set the stage, position the actors, and create an atmosphere quite independently from the general plot about to occur.

Between the Luncheon in 1863 and The Balcony in 1869, there are three other multi-figure paintings which seem to be exceptions to Manet’s scheme: Olympia (1863), Dead Christ with Angels (1865), and The Execution of Emperor Maximilian (1867). We have seen the influence of Manet’s scheme on these paintings in Post 17, 15, and 21, respectively. After the Prussian-French war 1870-71, we find a number of important works (The Railway 1873, Argenteuil 1874, Boating 1874) which seem to reduce the scheme to a relation between two persons. I will return to these paintings in later posts. The unfulfilled love with Berthe Morisot (whom he first met in 1869), the French-Prussian War, and the impact of his Impressionist phase (at least partly motivated by Morisot) may have distracted him from experimenting with his programmatic scheme – we don’t know. But then the scheme re-surfaces albeit in subtle ways – most clearly in Nana (1877) and At Pere Lathuille’s (1879) – and emerges, as we have seen (in Post 25 and 26), as a hidden “painting not painted” in A Bar at Folies-Bergère (1882).

In Figure 4, I try to picture the “stage” of A Bar at Folies-Bergère. The mirror might turn into a transparent background behind which we can see the chairs of figures in the mirror while the chair of the barmaid (as the Third) is placed on front stage. Such transparent screens were already in use on stage at the time. Hubert Gassner (2016, p193-204) has offered a fascinating analysis of Manet’s studies and the final portrait of his friend and actor Jean Baptiste Faure (1877) (Figure 3). Manet tried to capture the actor in the role of Hamlet seeing the ghost of his father. The study suggests that the actor sees the ghost – very likely projected on a transparent screen next to the viewer (or Manet himself) throwing a shadow onto the stage while the audience is looking on from behind. In the portrait the viewer and the screen are in front of the picture space, in the Bar a mirror is behind the barmaid showing the audience and the viewer in front. Both “Hamlet” and the barmaid are looking at something (or someone) which is not quite real.

Figure 3: Portrait of Jean Babtiste Faure in the Role of Hamlet
by Edouard Manet (1877)

Figure 4: Setting the stage for A Bar at Folies-Bergère

As the little diagrams show, the figures assume their “proper” role only in the Bar “unpainted” as I proposed in Post 25 and 26.

In this image, associations with modern concepts of theatre arise, I think, quite unavoidably. And it is certainly no coincidence that Manet’s closest friend at the time was the writer and critic Stéfane Mallarmé who was an influential reference in the development of modern theatre for a generation later.

Looking back to the works painted after Luncheon with the image of the “stage” helps to make a central point of MyManet: Not only can Manet’s scheme be abstracted from a process leading up to Luncheon on the Grass, one of Manet’s most famous paintings, but it is a more general scheme which influenced the following multi-figure works including his final masterpiece.

Another feature of his work is suggested by the image of a stage: there is a dark backstage, hidden from the viewer, from where actors enter to take their positions, and there are some unsettling surrealistic elements in his compositions which question his realism.
This “dark side” of Manet, I would like to illuminate in the next Post.

See you in in about two weeks!

Manet and the Male Gaze (P27)

By Richard Pieper

On March 21, 2022

In Edouard Manet

There is a “male gaze” in Manet’s A Bar at the Folies-Bergère.
The viewer seems to be looking at the barmaid in a way making her the object of his gaze.
But is there also a “female gaze” hidden in the “painting not painted”,
that is, in the reading of the Bar as seen from the perspective of the gentleman in the mirror? Is he seeing the barmaid as a subject?
Manet’s painting and a mirrored version taking this perspective have been discussed already in Post 26 as shown in Figure 1.

Let’s take another look.

Figure 1: A Bar at the Folies-Bergére and the “painting not painted”

Much has been written about the “male gaze” in art, and a “New Art History” has criticised the expression of male dominance also in Manet’s paintings.
This includes the “12 Views” (Collins 1996) on A Bar at the Folies-Bergère (1882), the main source for our discussion of the painting.

There can be no question that their criticism (not only feminist) of the “male gaze” – treating females as mere objects in art – is a valid social criticism. But already in Luncheon in the Grass (1863) and Olympia (1865), we have seen Manet as sympathetic to females who assert their independence through their gaze at the – presumably male – viewer.

To start, we should keep two things in mind.

First, the “painting not painted” is not an illusion which Manet depicts within the painting like a mirror image or a dream. Rather, the painting presents a puzzle which is designed to make the viewer use his or her imagination to re-arrange the “pieces” in ways that make sense.

Second, this kind of solution should be distinguished from re-interpreting his paintings in the light of theories (e.g. Freudism, Neo-Marxism, or Feminism) which cast a new light on Manet’s art but run the risks Champa is concerned about (see Post 25): We should not interpret Manet in ways that “make of what he doesn’t do the implied true meaning of what he does”.
A warning to be taken seriously, and, in a way, “the painting not painted” does exactly that. But the warning is not meant to blind us to the fact that Manet just loved irony, even parody, in his paintings. Playing with hidden meanings and with the expectations of the viewer is different from picturing mythological or historic “stories”, which he clearly abhorred, or applying theories which he did not know.

On male and female gazes

Approaching the painting, the viewer is captured by a seemingly realistic scene at a bar.
The mirrored couple, then, makes the viewer aware that much of the painting is, in fact, a reflection.
And this reflection is again questioned by the many details which contradict any realistic interpretation of the entire scene.

At some point (as described in previous Posts 25 and 26), the viewer will realize that he is somehow in the position of the mirrored gentleman. The “real” customer should stand in front of the barmaid just in the position of the viewer.

The “male gaze” may enter in two ways:

The male viewer might recognize – as theme of the painting – the way a male customer is expected to look at the barmaid, seemingly confirmed by the mirror image of a customer staring down at the barmaid. He may even identify with this expectation and be prompted into a “male gaze”; he may imagine approaching the barmaid wondering whether she is a prostitute.
The viewer, thus, falls for the illusion which Manet produced by the realism of the painting.
He, then, may proceed to a criticism either of the “male gaze” depicted and/or of Manet for holding it himself, depending on the viewer’s own ideology outside the painting.
The male viewer may realize that Manet is playing a game with the viewer’s expectations, the “male gaze”, and will search for further clues within the painting for alternative views.
The surrealism of the mirror image will encourage him in this search.

What about a female viewer?

Is she assumed by Manet to take “the role of the male” and interpret the painting – like the male viewer – in accordance with the dominant gender stereotypes at the time? Manet, the realist, just depicted purposefully a scene of potential prostitution, perhaps to express social criticism, and he assumed a male viewer – as reflected in the mirror – to support his realism?
Is she going to realize that Manet is playing with male expectations, and is she going to search for clues which encourage taking “the role of the female” and allow for a “female gaze”?

With MyManet, we obviously chose the second option.
The basic question is, of course, to what extent we – viewer and critics – are willing to credit Manet with anticipating the “male gaze” and with incorporating into the painting not only a social criticism of this gaze but also the alternative of a “female gaze”.
Is there a “female story” to the “male story”?

If we follow the “male story”,
the male viewer will be irritated by the fact that the “real” barmaid is somewhat avoiding his gaze.
Looking into the mirror, he will see himself impersonated by the gentleman in the mirror. This man is luckier, it seems, since the mirrored barmaid is more sympathetic, leaning toward him, but she is looking less like a potential prostitute (see Post 26).
This puts the viewer in an ambivalent position: does he really want to exercise a “male gaze” treating the barmaid as an object of his desire, or does he want her to look back at him as a female subject – as shown in the “painting not painted”? After all, the avoiding gaze of the “real” barmaid may very well be “caused” by the viewer’s “male gaze”.
Looking again at the couple in the mirror, he may realize that there is something quite uncanny about those two: He is too close to her and too large hovering over her in an unrealistic, imposing position; she is not meeting his gaze in a sympathetic way of “seeing being seen” – like in the “painting not painted” and shown in Luncheon on the Grass.
The ”male gaze” of the viewer is thoroughly disclosed and compromised!

If we follow a “female story”,
the female viewer may, at first, understand the wary gaze of the barmaid being subjected to and avoiding a “male gaze”. The mirrored couple with the imposing male will confirm her view.
But then the puzzle will take over: Why is the woman so different? Why is the gentleman too close and too large? Is there a different female identity implied by the clearly different woman in the mirror?
Imagining this other woman, the female viewer will “see” someone like in the “painting not painted” – a subject looking back at her.

Realizing that she is now looking from the position of the gentleman in the mirror, she might imagine mirroring of the painting like in the “male story” and – without identifying with the male viewer in front of the painting – turning him into the mirror on the left.
Now, the female viewer is meeting the gaze of a barmaid “seeing being seen” by a sympathetic viewer which need not have (but may have) sexual connotations (the assumption of potential prostitution being distinctly male).

The “painting not painted” clearly underlines the subjectivity of the barmaid who rejects being made a mere object by the “male gaze”. Showing a self-assured female subjectivity and identity is something Manet has done before, in fact, in all of his major paintings of women discussed previously.

Further supporting this view is an important change we witness from the study to the Bar (Figure 2):

The study shows a rather dominating barmaid looking down on a meagre customer.
The reflection in the mirror seems to correspond to the “reality”.
Manet’s intention to take a critical stand toward the “male gaze” is confirmed by this parody.
The final version shows the evasive look of a barmaid now more front and centre.
The effect of the “male gaze” appears to be his theme.
The self-confident barmaid has moved into the mirror.

Why this change? If not to initially capture the attention of the (male or female) viewer with a facial expression and posture requiring further explanation and involving the viewer in an intriguing puzzle.

Figure 2: Comparing the study with the final version of A Bar at the Folies-Bergère

The study unambiguously employs the “male gaze” and is easy to interpret by both male and female viewers, the final version is not. Divergent interpretations of generations of art historians attest to that. Rejecting the “male gaze”, the painting – not only the barmaid – asks for alternative readings which do not amount to a mere elaboration and confirmation of the “male story” based on the contemporary setting of the Folies-Bergère.

Especially the “female story” may raise doubts that female viewers will, indeed, imagine a complicated narrative along those lines (watch out for hidden sexism).
However, the “male story” is not really less complicated following pretty much accepted interpretations by (mostly male) art historians.
The descriptions are also more involved, while the reader may agree that looking at the images the female narrative is as accessible as the male version.

Evaluating the “female story”, it is enlightening to review the essays of the two feminist art historians among the “12 Views” : Carol Armstrong and Griselda Pollock.
Again, I will only extract some relevant aspects for our discussion:

Armstrong – optical ambiguities masking misogynistic gender ideology

Armstrong offers her own analysis of the “layers of illusionistic depth” (41) identifying the ambiguities and inconsistencies. The painting combines elements like a “collage” and the “optical ambiguities are really sexual ambiguities” masking a “misogynistic gender ideology” (42) resulting in the equation

spectator=male / object of vision=female.

For our purposes, the equation describes the “male gaze”, but, according to Armstrong, “this equation is nearly defeated”:

What we are offered to see in the painting is not “what we were waiting to see” (42).
Armstrong suggests three expectations not painted:

a picture showing the consumption of the sexual promises presumably made by the mirrored barmaid to the customer but not realized in the painting
a narrative showing the eventual meeting of human gazes, with the viewer and within the mirror, which is not happening
seeing some version of ourselves;
instead, “we feel, rather uncannily, that we are not there … as subjects we are absent”,
and this applies to both female and male spectators, since, “the spectacle’s male and female cases, are sewn together to form a Janus figure” (42).

In view of our “female story”, three aspects are interesting:

the first expectation, in a sense, assumes the painting under a “male gaze”
the second expectation hints at the alternative, our “painting not painted”
the painting is not analysed under a specifically female gaze – male and female views are “sewn together” – but rather under a general feministic perspective of the art historian criticising the “male gaze”.

Thus, Armstrong also suggests alternative “paintings not painted”. We learn something about a feministic view, but little about a specifically female experience of the painting different from a male one.

Griselda Pollock – The “View from Elsewhere”

Pollock claims an approach “to acknowledge and invite the sexual differentiation of spectatorship” (284) – to take the feminist “view from elsewhere”.
Writing her essay in form of an exchange of personal letters with a fictive “Feminist Scholar” and (obviously fictive) with Mary Cassatt, the friend and painter colleague of Manet, she wants us to join her in front of the painting and sharing her personal view:

“But like others before me, when I stand in front of the Bar I am now drawn into that play …” (290).

In view of MyManet and the “female story”, three aspects are relevant:

First,
Pollock subscribes totally to the characterization of Manet and his art as presented by the “big Others” (Pollock), namely, John Rewald, T.J. Clark and “to a lesser extent” Robert Herbert. Referencing the feminist art historian Novelene Ross, Manet’s painting is the art of a flaneur and dandy, a member of “the emergent bourgeoisie (that) produced a particularly vicious and confining concept of femininity” (284), with a “personal delight at being a man of his own time”, who especially in his last years “obsessively” rehearsed the “myth of La Parisienne” (305).

She backs this description up with Manet’s fascination with fashion, although his artist’s eye for modern beauty enhanced by fashion is not unequivocally linked to treating women as objects.
Pollock presents an informative example herself:
Manet’s arguably most fashionable picture of a beautiful woman is Spring: Jeanne (1881) shown in the Salon next to the Bar and eliciting exalted reactions by male critics. The “male gaze” clearly had a field day.
But then, Pollock’s friend Laura Mulvey pointed out to her that the face displays some curious similarity to the barmaid and that the descriptions of the critics did not correspond to the features of the portrait expressing “almost melancholy”, so that “the face stalemates the image of La Parisienne that the critic wants to see” (298).
If we agree with that observation, then we should be careful not to simply attribute the “vicious and confining concept of femininity” of the bourgeoisie to Manet.
If Manet aimed to “stalemate the image of La Parisienne”, should we interpret this only as the artist’s attempt to find “some telling, aesthetic form” (304)?
Or should we look for a different underlying concept of femininity in both of Manet’s paintings?

Second,
Pollock does detect clues for another view, the feminist “View from Elsewhere”.
Looking at the “reflections” of the painting, her gaze is drawn to the periphery to the “signifying female figures” on the balcony to the left. Two of the three women have been identified as prominent representatives of La Parisienne, but the third is generally recognized as citing Mary Cassatt’s painting At the Opera (1879) (see Figure 3). What is overlooked, according to Pollock addressing Cassatt, is “the radical ‘translation’ involved in taking your young bourgeois woman from the respectable opera and placing her among the demi-mondaines of the Folies-Bergère” (293).
The significance of this fact is not entirely clear. Are we to assume that Manet obscures with this move, and by placing her in the background, the feministic and critical potential of the figure? Or is the displacement meant by Manet to trigger exactly critical interpretations like Pollock’s? The former would explain why she later sees Manet only “obliquely and indirectly” (307) signifying the feminist dimension of the painting. The latter would be another sign for Manet’s inclusion of a “female gaze”.

Pollock does not tell, but what follows is a vibrant characterization of Cassatt’s woman At the Opera signifying a third – feminist – view from elsewhere. Pollock’s description of this view into “space off” fully agrees with the characterization of the Third in MyManet! The “authority” has only shifted to the “Elsewhere” of a feministic position. The woman is “seeing without seeing being seen” – as is Cassatt’s woman by the gentleman on the balcony in the background .
Then, Pollock is trying to link Cassatt’s gaze out of the picture space with the “guarded non-look” of the barmaid who “appears but does not see”(Pollock). The barmaid is interpreted as a “subtle” solution of “a modern woman looking at the viewer”, not as challenging as Degas’ woman at the race course (Figure 3), but with a “reminder of that other woman, of Mary Cassatt and her representation of looking as active feminine desire” (303).

Figure 3:

Mary Cassatt At the Opera (1879)

Edgar Degas Woman with Field Glasses (1865)

Again, in view of MyManet, there is an interesting parallel. The woman on the balcony is seen as a Third and linked to the main figure, a subtle clue to interpret the barmaid also in terms of a Third – like in Manet’s scheme. However, it is somewhat puzzling that not the main figures in the painting – Pollock hardly mentions the figures to right – but the little sideshow on the balcony should provide the initial key to her interpretation. (In MyManet, the little scene of three women is a reminder of Manet’s scheme (Post 25)).
It is even more puzzling that “a modern woman looking at the viewer” – as Manet shows in Olympia or The Waitress and dramatized in Degas’ drawing – should be signified by a woman not looking at the viewer, even by a woman avoiding direct eye contact.

But Pollock is not really interested in a systematic analysis of all gazes, already the gazes of the other two women are neglected. Unfortunately, they are representatives of demi-mondaines who belong to the other “male world” of the painting.

Third,
Pollock admits another way in which the barmaid – the painting’s “oddity at the center”- is “attracting her gaze but then directs it to those ardent feminine writers of the time” (304). There is “another history, one that enables me to make a feminist identification with its central female figure” (306).

In view of MyManet, this confirms the potential within the painting for a distinctly “female story”. Pollock does not use the mirror image of the couple to the right to explicate a feminist view, but choses the citation of Cassatt’s woman on the balcony to the left.
But she is “drawn into the play” as a female identifying with a female.

The problem is, she does not credit Manet with aiming at this effect. On her account, her female sensitivity detects the “oblique” and “implicit” signs of a “female story”. In her postmodern theory of the painting as a text, the author “Manet” is not the subject writing his story. He is seen as an individual reworking “heavily loaded ideological materials” which import into the painting both the “male gaze” of the ruling ideology and signs of the “female gaze” of an emerging feminist movement. The scene where it happens is the studio where Manet’s labour and the model Suzon’s labour meet “in a concrete social space” (307).

In view of MyManet, Pollock demonstrates that the painting enables female identification through a distinct “female story”, at least, if we attribute to him more authorship of the signs revealed by both her and Armstrong than Pollock is willing to do.
A basis for acknowledgment is provided by Pollock herself when she is referring to the concrete social space of the studio and the interaction of Manet and his model Suzon in the production of art – Manet’s “very signature as an artist” (307). So far, MyManet would agree.
Then, she imagines those “ardent feminine writers” (who evidently are not totally confined by the bourgeois concept of femininity) as campaigning with Suzon in the streets of Paris. But she does not consider that his working class models, Suzon as well as Victorine Meurent, or Mary Cassatt and Berthe Morisot, his close friends, art colleagues, and modern women, had influence on Manet in that “concrete social space”. We should assume that their interacting creativity – of both sides, female and male – allowed for a (relative) independence resembling that of those pioneers of the feminist movement, not in the field of politics but in the field of art.

From all we know, Manet had a great social sensitivity, he respected women, and he was a contrarian not readily accepting social norms whether inside or outside the studio.

After all, his Olympia dared a very direct gaze at the viewer; she did not stare from a safe distance through field glasses at Edgar Degas betraying his ambivalent relation to women including his friendship with Mary Cassatt.

The surrealistic couple on the upper right side, the free-floating mirror image of the bar, and the strange depiction of the feet on a trapeze in the upper left corner are just three of the more obvious elements which breach a straightforward realistic interpretation.
They suggested another layer beneath the realistic illusions, the “painting not painted”, and motivated our search for a “female gaze”.

So, let us take another look at Manet’s realism!

See you in about two weeks!

A Bar at the Folies-Bergère – Manet’s Scheme in the Mirror (26)

By Richard Pieper

On February 28, 2022

In Edouard Manet

The “12 Views” of A Bar at the Folies-Bergère (Collins 1996) discussed in the previous Post 25 had two topics in common:
the role of the barmaid as picturing Manet’s view of women in Parisian society and the spatial inconsistencies or violations of perspectives caused by the mirror.

But there are other aspects which are neglected or featuring less prominent in the discussion.

Let us consider some of these aspects taking a fresh look at the painting
and a sketch in Figure 1.

Figure 1: Edouard Manet

A Bar at the Folies-Bergère (1882) and Sketch for A Bar at the Folies-Bergère (1881)

First question:

Disregard for correct perspective is not a new feature in Manet’s paintings.
But why using a mirror to close up the background rather than a curtain, a wall or a dark space or some other partitioning as in previous paintings?

Staging the figures in a limited “flattened” space – in a “puppet theatre” – and leaving the viewer in a shifting position in front of the scene – that is a feature which is characteristic of Manet’s scheme as proposed in MyManet.
But, using a mirror – which is typically used to open up a space – to close off the scene in the back is counterintuitive. We should think that it simply does not work. It does in this painting.

The viewer is fully aware that the barmaid is standing in a very narrow space between the bar and the mirror. Manet is moving the balcony on the left side forward like in a magnifying mirror, as Flam (166) observes, and he uses a loser, impressionistic brushwork painting the background.
The black back of the reflected barmaid effectively closes off the view on the right side (an effect not achieved in the sketch!).

Using the mirror in ways obviously violating optical laws creates problems for his realistic style.
Why is Manet inviting doubts about his realism?

Second question:

The barmaid reflected in the mirror seems to be a different woman.

The mirror image has rather loose hair while the barmaid has her hair tightly pulled back. Flam (166) even suggests that she might have a ponytail. The cheeks of the mirror image seem to be rounder, her waist somewhat fuller, and her posture leaning forward and more attentive and friendly to the customer – if not inviting and “eager to please” (Flam 167).

But, does she look more like a casual prostitute than the barmaid confronting the viewer with her tight waist and low neckline, as many interpretations suggest?
Or is this a view following from an assumption that the gentleman in the mirror surely must be a potential customer?
As Lüthy (2003, 164) observes: In interpretations that follow T.J. Clark’s focus on prostitution in Paris at the time, it seems that “the interpreter approaches Manet’s painting like the customer the counter” trying to find out whether she is a prostitute or not (own translation).
Is Manet – perhaps critically – presenting the “male gaze” or is he playing with the expectations of the viewer?

Third question:

The viewer seems to be standing at a comfortable distance from the barmaid
(about 2m following Flam).
However, the gentleman in the mirror is uncomfortably close leaning over the counter and looking down into the eyes of the woman. He is scaled a little too large and looming in the upper corner at a position which does not correspond to any possible place in front of the barmaid.
It is not even clear whether she is returning his gaze or looking somewhere through and beyond him. (Both facts are somewhat at odds with the interesting interpretation of Duve – see Post 25.)

In the sketch for the Bar in Figure 1, a smaller customer is positioned lower and looking up to the barmaid looking down on him. Their gazes in the mirror seem to meet. The barmaid herself is looking to a place to the right of the viewer where the gentleman actually may stand.
Why the changes?
Why is the barmaid in the final version looking toward the viewer but avoiding eye contact?
Why is the mirror image of the assumed customer now moved into an implausible position in the upper right corner?

Fourth question:

In the final version, the left side is on closer inspection a confusing collage of detached elements:
– The balcony is too close compared to the right side (compare also the width of the columns);
– the legs of the artist on the trapeze are too small and certainly not above the stage;
– the counter with bottles in the mirror is floating in the air;
– the balcony appears to be zoomed in to avail a better look at the people on the other side.
Art historians have identified the three women sitting around an empty chair, two looking toward the stage to the left, one seems to look at the viewer.
A fourth person, a gentleman with a black moustache, looks similar to the gentleman in the upper right corner and he seems to direct his gaze at the barmaid (or the viewer’s back).

Manet is clearly citing people he knows. We see a “little cabinet of perspectives” (Lüthy p.178) in the focus of the left side.
How should we explain this grouping and the direction of their gazes?

So, what to make of these questions in view of MyManet and applying Manet’s scheme?

As a starting point, the painting has been described as a “testament” by several authors.
If it is true that Manet is looking back and citing many of his important paintings, and
if MyManet is capturing with Manet’s scheme some relevant feature of his work,
then we should find aspects of his scheme in the composition of the Bar.

On first sight, this is not really promising:

There is only one figure in the painting – and two or more reflections.
Manet’s scheme as developed in discussing the Luncheon on the Grass (1863) provides for four positions and gazes within the painting (see Post 9 and 24):

The First – looking at the viewer:
“seeing being seen” by the viewer

The Second – looking at someone within the picture space supporting the internal “stage”:
“being seen seeing” by the viewer

The Third – looking out and beyond the picture space:
“seeing without seeing being seen” by some other

The “Other” – looking from the back:
seeing from a position other than the viewer.

The barmaid is clearly puzzling since she is not really looking at the viewer.
If anything, she is gazing at some unidentified spot beyond the viewer – seeing without seeing being seen.
This would qualify her for the position of the Third.
An example of this variation of the scheme we found in Breakfast in the Atelier with the young man standing very up front and looking past the viewer (Post 18 and 19).
The couple reflected in the mirror would have to take the role of the First and the Second.
But that seems quite a stretch for the scheme.
The woman in the mirror as the First (seeing being seen) would use the mirror and look backward at the gentleman who takes the role of the viewer in front of the painting.
Conceivable; however, this leaves us without the Second.

The gentleman in the mirror seems to meet the gaze of the barmaid in the role of the First, establishing a relation between her and the viewer represented by him.
For the role of the “Other”, looking at the scene from the back, he is clearly much to close to her.
The ”Other” could be identified readily in the mirror on the balcony to the left.
Especially the gentleman with the moustache, as Flam (166) describes him, is literally looking from the back onto the scene.

Thus, to satisfy Manet’s scheme we need an interpretation for the missing Second.
(Somewhat like Sherlock Holmes and the dog that did not bark.)

For a solution, we consider the role of the couple in the mirror again.

What if their role is just to provide the viewer with a clue on how to “read” the painting and to see

the painting that Manet did not paint ?

What is the clue?

Manet clearly invites the viewer to take the position of the gentleman in the mirror and to see what he is seeing.

Basically, that means that the entire scene is turned around and the reflected viewer is now in the position of the “real” viewer looking into the eyes of the barmaid who is gazing at him. The “real” barmaid will turn into the mirror on the left side looking toward the back. The “real” viewer will take a position in the mirror to the left, only that – keeping his distance from the barmaid – her reflection will appear more behind the barmaid in the centre.

The new “painting not painted” would look somewhat like in Figure 2 !

Figure 2: “The painting not painted”:
The original painting and the Bar seen with the eyes of the man in the mirror

The “new” painting is actually based on mirroring the original painting vertically,
thus, it combines a mirror image – like in a lithograph, an operation quite familiar to Manet – with the turning around of positions.

Some “photoshopping” is also needed. The waist of the barmaid is adapted and a ponytail introduced (following Flam). Most importantly, the face of the friendly barmaid has to be inserted. I took the liberty of utilizing the face of Manet’s favourite model of his earlier period – an undated portrait of Victorine Meurent.

But why using a reflection of the painting?

Unlike the small angle assumed in Duve’s interpretation (see Post 25) turning of the mirror – we now assume an almost 180 degrees turning of the painting and moving the position of the viewer. Duve wants to explain the positions of the two figures within the painting (barmaid and customer) keeping the place of the viewer fixed. This is still a meaningful layer of interpretation.

Given the positions, however, MyManet tries to explain:
Why are the mirrored figures painted as they are?
– clearly not as realistic reflections of the figures assumed in front of the mirror, as Duve implies.

Now, if we apply Manet’s scheme to the “painting not painted” – it works!

In Figure 2, we see the missing Second now impersonated by the (imagined) former viewer.
The barmaid is perfect in the role of the First leaning slightly forward and engaging the viewer.
The “Other”, the gentleman on the balcony, has switched sides, but is still onlooking.
The Third, the mirrored barmaid, in this variation is looking somewhere off to the back. She is “seeing without seeing being seen by some other”.
This is a variation in the direction of the gaze compatible with the scheme. And we still have the original barmaid with her evasive gaze in front of us (reminding us of the Third) when we – as viewer – imagine looking with the eyes of our reflection in the mirror.

Revealing the role of Manet’s scheme in the composition supports interpretations of the painting as a “testament”. It is not only citing previous own paintings but also revitalizing and creatively developing a basic compositional scheme.
Already since Olympia (1865) – as demonstrated in Post 17 – Manet has applied variations of the scheme with fewer figures. In the 70ies, after The Balcony (1868), he has used the scheme only partially in paintings with two figures (for instance, Nana). We will have a look at the major paintings in the 1870ies in following posts to see the continuing influence of the scheme.

Here, in A Bar at the Folies-Bergère, Manet goes one step further and ingeniously – so the view of MyManet – applies the scheme with only one central figure and with a counterintuitive use of a mirror to set the “stage”.

The view that Manet is searching in the Bar for a new and innovative variation of his scheme can explain some of the changes from the study to the final version (Figure 2).

Moving the barmaid in the centre and giving her this famous avoiding gaze is designed to radicalize the attempt from Breakfast in the Atelier placing the Third front and centre – this time as the only “real” figure.
Already in the Atelier, we interpreted the gaze of the young man as looking into his open future. The role of the Third, more generally, signifies in the scheme the orientation to some “authority” outside the picture space.
Both aspects gain obvious significance in a painterly “testament” by a painter expecting his death.
With the gaze of the barmaid directed somewhere passed the viewer, the right side of the study (Figure 4) does not work anymore. Manet had to find a new solution which preserves credibility as a realistic painting, at least on first sight, and which allows for the application of the scheme to the other figures.
The result is the juxtaposition of a painting with a “painting not painted”.

The study and the first impression of the final version do not conform to the scheme,
but a viewer accepting the invitation to imagine looking through the eyes of his (or her) “impersonator” in the mirror will have the benefit of seeing the scheme – an important element of his “testament”.

But there is another clue on the left side. One is tempted to say, for those of us (including me) who do (or did) not readily recognize the clue on the right side pointing to the presence of Manet’s scheme.
Interpreters typically focus on the figures on the balcony only as representing friends and colleagues.
The “little cabinet of perspectives” (Lüthy p.178), however, can also be seen as a citation of Manet’s scheme!

The empty chair creates a space distinguishing the three adjoining figures.
The figure to the left reminds of Berthe Morisot in The Balcony posing for the Second (although she has been identified as another friend of Manet’s);
the figure to the right is citing a painting by Mary Cassat, and she is using her opera glass to stare beyond the picture space – a candidate for the role of the Third;
the woman in the next row (clearly accentuated by the empty chair) is looking straight at the viewer – taking the role of the First.
The gentleman to the far left plays already the role of the “Other” but – given his reflection – he can also be seen as doubling as an “Other” in the “little cabinet”. (The lady and the gentleman could change roles as First and “Other”, but I think that the empty chair is meant to join the lady to the triad.)

The complex composition is summarized in the diagram in Figure 3:

Figure 3: Diagram of the scheme in A Bar at the Folies-Bergère

On the left and centre, now we see Manet’s scheme with the roles of the First, Second and Third. Additionally, the shifting position of the viewer is indicated. In the original, the viewer is induced to move slightly from the centre to the right trying to align with the mirror image within the painting. In the “painting not painted”, the viewer is motivated to shift to the left as indicated in the diagram.
This shifting from outside to inside and from right to left will motivate the viewer (if he or she is trying to solve the puzzle) to look “from the side” on the level of the mirror plane – a position supporting identification with the Second and establishing the picture space.
On the right side, we see the “little cabinet” reminding of the scheme and the “Other” doubling inside and outside the painting.
Besides the painterly challenges of using a mirror as a background, Manet has solved the problem of staging his 4-figure scheme within a painting featuring essentially one figure.

Two questions (1 and 2) are still open from our list above:

Manet is playing games with the “male gaze”.
In view of the “painting not painted”, is there a clue that there is also a “female gaze not painted”?

And:

Manet seems to put into question a realistic interpretation more radically than in any previous painting.
This is especially troubling in the case of the looming face of the gentleman placed in the upper right corner.
Should we reassess Manet’s self-claimed position as a realist?

Good questions, but let us address them in the next post.

See you in about two weeks!

Manet and the Mirror – A Bar at the Folies-Bergère (P25)

By Richard Pieper

On February 14, 2022

In Edouard Manet

Manet’s last masterpiece – A Bar at the Folies-Bergère (1882) – is valued by many as “one of the canonical images of modern art history” (Armstrong). Over a hundred years later in “12 Views on Manet’s Bar” (Collins 1996), art historians from a broad range of approaches (Marxist, psycho-analytic, structuralist, post-structuralist, feminist, and “standard practitioners”) were invited to discuss their different views choosing an especially suited example for such a comparison – Manet’s masterpiece.

Figure 1: Edouard Manet A Bar at the Folies-Bergère (1882)

The literature on this painting is endless and still growing. Therefore, I will limit my references in this post to essays in this collection, with one exception as explained below. The collection has become a standard source itself and it is so rich of insights into Manet’s work that I will not try to discuss the contributions fairly and not all of them – I will just ruthlessly explore and exploit them for MyManet.

My question is: What do we see in the Bar if we look at it with the eyes of MyManet?

My view is especially unfair, since it will largely exclude a major focus of the “12 Views”, namely, the demonstration of the way that different theoretical and ideological backgrounds can make substantial contributions to art history.
Central positions of a “New Art History” are: a Marxist social history exemplified by an influential book on Manet by T.J. Clark (The Painting of Modern Life 1984) and critically reassessed (Driskel, Gronberg, Herbert, House); psycho-analytic theory based on Freud and Lacan (Carrier, Collins, Levine); and feminist analyses (Armstrong, Pollock); they are confronted with positions of more “standard practitioners” (Collins) in art history (Shiff, Boime, Champa, Flam) .

MyManet can profit from all positions in some respects – and will disagree with each of them in others. Which is not really surprising, since this applies to all the other contributions, too.

In the following, I want to take a closer look at two issues:

the context of the painting in the discussion
Manet’s realism and the role of the mirror

Based on these reflections, I will suggest an alternative view inspired by Manet’s scheme.
The scheme will not apply in a straightforward way,
but provide a new twist to the other “12 Views”.
This alternative I will presented in the following post.

The context

Most essays follow the invitation of the editor and limit their contribution to this particular painting, its socio-historical context, Manet’s work and life in Paris at the time, and selected other paintings relevant for the specific perspective they want to add to the discussion.
A special issue is the role of the mirror addressed by all authors and taken up below.
Another issue evolves around the question who the barmaid – the model Suzon – is or is representing:

Is she a typical lower class working woman determined by her class situation?
Is she a casual prostitute not only offering drinks but also her body?
Is she symbolizing, in her somewhat constraint frontal posture, religious representations of Virgin Mary?
Or is she presenting the duality of female identity at the time between the “virtuous” (bourgeois) woman and the “fallen” whore?
In what way does Manet’s biography as an upper-middle class male or his problematic family background (Is his son actually the son of his father?) influence the content of the painting?
What role is his disease and nearing death playing?

These analyses – largely responding to the influential work by the art historian T.J. Clark – deliberate on legitimate and interesting questions.
But, they tend to neglect two aspects which are important in view of MyManet:

First, socio-historical considerations of class situation and gender issues of the time describe important conditions of Manet, his work and his models. Consequently, “the barmaid’s unexplained refusal or inability to respond positively to the male spectator’s intense gaze” is readily interpreted as reflecting class domination, female suppression, or Manet’s “pessimistic convictions on relations between the sexes” (Collins p. 129).
But this perspective tends to underrepresent the emerging individual self in modernizing society and the new liberties gained or taken not only in bohemian subcultures.
For instance, Boime (60) sees the barmaid more in context of the Parisian life enjoyed by the “flaneur” Manet. The barmaid becomes a “female equivalent of the flaneur” and her moment of private withdrawal from the scene – as expressed in her absent gaze – becomes an expression of a “residue of subjectivity” distancing herself from her public performance as barmaid.
Thus, there is a gap between the societal conditions and the individual situation, and we should be careful in drawing conclusions about the effects of the former on the reactions of the latter – and about Manet’s intentions to depict social criticism in his final work.

Figure 2: Paintings by Edouard Manet related to the Bar

Second, there are not only other contexts for the interpretation of the role of the barmaid as characterizing Parisian life; there are also questions about her depicted role as describing more generally the role of women in Manet’s art.

Pollock (306) points out that the painting does not just show Parisian life at the time but keeps the viewer aware of the studio situation and, thus, of Manet’s relation to his models – typically friends and family – and not only to the particular subject, like the barmaid Suzon modelling herself.

The expression of the face should be seen in context of the whole painting, and interpretations placed in the context of his actual relations to females. As Pollock observes, the painting could not have been painted by a “bourgeois woman” (290); thus, a male bias is clearly present in the painting. But such a bourgeois woman is featuring in The Balcony (see Figure 2) “just looking” at the viewer, while Manet’s whole attention (and admiration) seems to be focused on the other woman (Berthe Morisot) “looking to the ‘space off’ signif[ying] the inscription of female desire for ‘the more’ for which feminism stands” (294; emphasis added). Pollock makes no reference to The Balcony, but she suggests that the woman with the opera glass on the balcony in the background of the Bar is a reference to a painting by Mary Cassat – another independent woman, painter, and friend of Manet. Pollock (among other feminist art historians) describes Manet as very sympathetic to the cause of female vote in politics and their independence in art.

In this perspective, it is telling that most authors dwell on the issue of prostitution or on the symbolic dualism: the barmaid’s posture is resembling religious depictions of Virgin Mary while her mirror image appears to suggest an erotic interest in the customer looking down on her.
Now, Manet shows some fascination with women of the “demi-monde” – think of Olympia (Figure 2). But he also depicts them – as well as other women of different social background – with respect if not admiration. See, for instance, The Waitress (1879) in Figure 3, and in The Balcony (1868) his painter colleague and model Berthe Morisot, a respectable woman of upper-middle class and (later) wife of his brother (Figure 2). Perhaps his most famous portrait of a beautiful young woman – Spring: Jeanne (1881) in Figure 3 – was exhibited next to the Bar in the Salon of 1882. The fact that she also was an actress with “loose” moral standards adds nothing to the interpretation of the painting.
It is at least not obvious what the possible background of casual prostitution of the barmaid Suzon adds to the understanding of Manet’s intentions in painting the Bar.

Figure 3: The Waitress (1879) and Spring: Jeanne (1881)

The point is: Taking the painting – considered as a final “testament” of his art – out of the wider context of Manet’s work and placing it in a narrower context like Parisian (male) amusement is bound to misrepresent the complexity of the painting.
As Flam (184) states, the painting is first of all a “poetic image”, although Manet choses the setting of a bar at the time.

Champa, I think, finds an adequate formulation for this aspect when calling the painting Manet’s “private art history” (106). This final masterpiece tries to look back on about 20 years of work in which Manet’s strives to position himself in the tradition of painting while questioning established norms. There are numerous citations in the Bar of earlier works – Christ with Angels, Olympia, The Balcony, Breakfast, At the Cafe, to name a few – but the “12 views” do not exploit these references by placing the painting into a more systematic “private art history”.

Considering the aim of the editor to show-case different approaches in their interpretation of the same masterpiece, this limitation might make sense.

In view of MyManet, however, it also demonstrates that there is no convincing interpretation of a masterpiece which does not interpret it in the context of relevant other works by the master.

Manet’s realism and the mirror

All interpreters – including myself – are fascinated by the puzzle of the image in the mirror.

Everybody agrees that the mirror is not correctly presenting the reality of the scene at the bar. But how the distortions are to be explained gives rise to very different interpretations.

The most obvious “mistakes” are that the image of the back of the barmaid in the mirror to the right would – in reality – be hidden behind the barmaid and that the gentleman looking into the eyes of the barmaid in the mirror would also be hidden. He would actually stand before the barmaid at the counter in the position of the viewer.

Less obvious but disturbing when trying to “read” the spatial relations is that the reflection of the counter with its marvellous still life seems to be floating in mid-air. At the left side, there is no floor and no balustrade indicating the space in front of the bar where the viewer would stand. We are looking into an “abyss” (Flam), and the items on the counter are not correctly reflected in the mirror. We have a clear view to the opposite side of the hall with a balcony full of visitors, some of them looking to the left to the action on stage, others looking back at the barmaid or at the viewer’s back.
Manet is playing games with us, again.

The “mistakes” are certainly intended raising the question of their meaning.

One issue concerns Manet’s realism. As Champa (108) puts it:
“Like all of Manet’s best works the Bar looks right before it looks wrong, and the letter sensation never completely subverts the former.”
Manet is not showing a convincing illusion, but he is not presenting the reality of the scene either. According to Flam (168) the “spatial contradiction … calls into question the very notion of realism.” But this is not new, we have seen this violation of naturalistic representation, especially of the laws of perspective, already in the Luncheon on the Grass.
As to the adequacy of depiction, Manet’s realism – in view of MyManet – is better understood as “reasoned imagery” following a practice of engravings and lithographs in science (see Post 10 and 11). Here, realistic depictions of, say, a flower may show the flower and the fruits or different stages of growth in the same picture. Realism is not (only and always) what you see but what exists. And Manet’s realism aims at representation in a social space constituted by the gazes within the painting and with the viewers outside; it is a realism of relations.

Flam (169) describes it as going beyond “surface realism” or – citing Baudelaire – “not only of seeing, but seeing of meanings”. This realism allows Manet, according to Flam, to introduce the mirror image as depiction of an “interior monologue” (171) or of something the barmaid is daydreaming.

In this case, the gentleman in the mirror does not exist in front of the barmaid and his absence (being seen only in a dream) rather than his impossible presence (reflected in violation of optical laws) poses the starting point for interpretations.

Both Collins and Flam emphasize, moreover, that Manet’s first sketch of the scene is more naturalistic (see Figure 4), and that the changes Manet made in the process lead to a more formal or poetic composition and an iconic symbolism reminding of Virgin Mary.

Figure 4: A Bar at the Folies-Bergère (sketch) (1881)

Similarly, Driskel (146) points out that the final version of the Bar reminds of Dead Christ with Angels (1864) in its religious symbolism while Christ Mocked by Soldiers (1865) rather resembles the sketch showing the illustration of an historical event transposed into contemporary reality (albeit in Manet’s studio – Post 14 and 15).
Thus, already early in his realism Manet moved intentionally between a more natural and a more symbolic “reasoned” imagery.
And he does it without falling into the trap of the (false) alternative of abstract formalism versus relativistic subjectivity which Richard Shiff seems to assume in his introduction. In his words: the alternative between sincerity following rational, verbalized aesthetic principles, or morality, sensibility and inner psychological states (8). Manet’s way out – according to Shiff – is cultivating a style of ”technical abbreviations” or a personal “visual rhetoric” (9).

In view of MyManet, this is not capturing Manet’s realism.

Quoting from Post 11:
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).

This experimental approach is beautifully demonstrated in a more recent analysis by Thierry de Duve (1999). Not included among the “12 Views”, his contribution is the exception mentioned above.

Duve shows convincingly that the “12 Views” and earlier attempts to resolve the spatial inconsistencies in the painting by the juxtaposition of different positions of the viewer are inadequate. Supporting his argument with diagrams, he rather suggests that the customer is imagined in two different positions as he moves to the counter. First, he is seen only in the mirror – like in Manet’s earlier sketch (Figure 4) – coming from the right outside the perspective of the viewer. Then, in the studio, Manet turns the mirror at about a 20 degree angle forward on the right side. Now, the customer moves into the position of the viewer in front of the painting while his mirror image and the mirrored barmaid become visible to the viewer as in the final version.

Thus, Manet is juxtaposing two moments in time by manipulating the spatial arrangement of the mirror.

In view of MyManet, the beauty of this interpretation is not so much the solution of the spatial puzzle. That Manet did play games with the laws of perspective, we know from the analysis of Luncheon of the Grass already. The attractiveness is more in imagining Manet as an active, realistic experimenter in his studio rather than, say, as an inventor of dream worlds of the barmaid floating in a mirror!

This is not to say that interpretations starting from the surreal character of the mirror image and proceeding to socio-historic and/or psychoanalytic scenarios are wrong or illegitimate. Manet was probably well aware that he encouraged such interpretations. But on a first layer of interpretation, we can start with “spatial games” within the painting and with the position of the viewer.

Or as Champa puts it: We need not assume the role of “socially sensitive” scholars who interpret Manet in ways that “make of what he doesn’t do the implied true meaning of what he does” (105).

Or even better: In view of MyManet, we can be “socially sensitive” interpreters but remain on a level of interpretation of social space without resorting to deeper psychological or sociological “stories”.
How?
Obviously, by applying Manet’s scheme successfully to A Bar at the Folies-Bergère! This we will show in the next post.

But why introduce the mirror in such a prominent role if it only creates ambiguities for a realistic reading?

The mirror has a long tradition in the history of painting and serves different functions:

The mirror shows what cannot be seen from the viewer’s perspective or from the perspective of a figure in the painting. It shows what some “other” person can see from inside or outside of the painting. This includes the face of the person looking into the mirror which can only be seen (frontally) in the mirror by the person looking.
In a sense, a painting – or the person looking out of the painting – functions in the role of a mirror.
We develop the image of ourselves looking into the “mirror” provided by the faces of other persons, or: by Seeing Being Seen (Post 24).
In this function, it plays also an important role in the psychoanalytic theory of Jacques Lacan. Especially Collins (131) provides some valuable insight into the role of Lacan’s “other” in the interpretation of the Bar (and by implication for Manet’s scheme).

But Manet supports and, at the same time, subverts such interpretations. The barmaid is not functioning as a “mirror” – Seeing Being Seen – for the viewer; her gaze is somewhat diverted.
The mirror behind her shows the customer in the position of the viewer, so who is mirrored?

A problem with mirrors is that they do not show reality but a reflection.

As we have seen in Post 12, this poses already problems in the case of a self-portrait.
A mirror parallel to the picture plane and not showing the painter and/or the viewer, obviously violates physical reality.
In Figure 5, we see an example by Manet’s colleague and friend Gustave Caillebotte, At the Café (1880). Caillebotte is also a realist of sorts, although he joined the impressionists, and he supports a realist interpretation by showing the reflection of the gentleman in the café pretty much where the viewer would expect seeing it in the mirror – covering the image of the viewer. The viewer tends to place himself or herself slightly to the left. And Caillebotte supports this shift by letting the gentleman looking to the right passed the viewer. He is not catching the gaze of the viewer as a “mirror” or as an engaging subject! Manet’s barmaid makes the viewer wonder if she is “seeing being seen” – if not hoping that she redirects her attention sympathetically like in the mirror image.

Figure 5: Mirror images by Manet and Caillebotte

In the Bar, it is telling that Manet introduces ambiguities on both sides of the mirror plane. The items reflected in the mirror do not correspond to those in front. Even more puzzling:

the barmaid appears in the pose of Virgin Mary (Driskel) or Dead Christ with Angels avoiding the viewer’s or customer’s gaze but is depicted with a tight seductive waist and low neckline;
her mirror image seems to be more receptive to the sexual wishes of the costumer but her fuller waist and somehow sympathetic appearance is reminding rather of Manet’s Dutch wife Suzanne. Flam (166) also points out that the barmaid has her hair strictly pulled back like bound in a ponytail while her mirror image has more girly loose strains.

But, when Manet is not confronting a layer of reality – the barmaid and the still life in front of us – with a layer of “deep” or “absent” meaning of phenomena in the mirror, what else is he doing?
Besides having the viewer search the painting for some cues as to where his or her own position could be and looking into the abyss in the left side of the mirror?
What is the “message” of the couple in the mirror if not reflecting some reality in front of the painting?

Advancing an own “twist” to the interpretation of spatial inconsistencies, I suggest taking a fresh look applying Manet’s scheme.

Seeing you in about two weeks! (PS: Still recovering from Covid…)

Seeing Being Seen (P24)

By Richard Pieper

On January 15, 2022

In Edouard Manet

In my diagrammatic artwork “Seeing Being Seen” I tried to capture the changing perspectives on the scene of Luncheon on the Grass which a viewer walking around Manet’s “installation” would experience.
Confronted with the painting itself, a viewer will first be engaged by the gaze of the nude woman looking directly at the viewer – see the sketch in the lower left of Figure 1.

Her gaze includes the viewer as an onlooker, if not intruder, to the scene – we are drawn into the painting.

Figure 1: Seeing Being Seen. Manet’s “Luncheon on the Grass” (Pieper 2020)

Being part of the scene, the viewer might follow the gazes of the other participants. We all have the natural disposition to do that.
Besides the woman’s perspective on the viewer (lower left in Figure 1), there are three perspectives, one for each participant:

Looking at the man to the right (the Second in Manet’s scheme), it is somewhat unclear who he is looking at, since the other two are clearly not responding to his gaze.
Following his gaze, we would stare into the trees to the left. Imagining walking around to the left and stepping into the line of his gaze, we might get a view like in the lower right of Figure 1.

Turning our attention to the other man (the Third in Manet’s scheme), his gaze is somehow trailing off beyond our right shoulder directed toward something or somebody beyond the more immediate scene. Following his gaze, we expect seeing the empty sky (or Nadar’s balloon, as suggested previously).
Stepping into his gaze appears to be impossible; we would have to imagine floating somewhere in mid-air looking down at him.
This is the perspective of the upper left in Figure 1.

Then, the viewer will become aware of the woman in the background. Her involvement with the group is obvious (she is even somewhat imposing herself on the group by being too large for her distance from the group), but she is looking at the group only from the “outside” in her peripheral vision.
Following her gaze will not reveal much, but imagining looking over her shoulder, as in the upper right of Figure 1, we become aware of the group as seen through her eyes “from the back” of the painting.
At this point, we “see” that we – the viewer – are not “really” included in the painting but in front of it:
We were sent on a walk around within the painting.

In MyManet, we assume that Manet was more or less intentionally trying to engage the viewer in this kind of walk. He wanted to make the viewer aware of the perspectives of the agents involved rather than arresting his or her imagination in the single viewpoint of the physical perspective looking through the “window” of the frame.

So far, discussing Manet’s scheme, I have paid attention only to the figures within the painting and the targets of their gazes identifying unrepresented agents outside the painting like the viewer or unrepresented “others”.

In view of MyManet, one way to enter the scene is to keep our position and to follow the gazes, but that seems only to point to unrepresented agents outside the painting. The development of Manet’s scheme was guided by this approach.

Another way is to “face” the figures as imagined in the walk described above.

In the imaginary walk, we also look back at the figures in the painting from positions outside the picture space. On this walk, the figures would “experience” being seen by us, and we “experience” seeing them while being seen by them.

Let us take a closer look at this “seeing being seen”.

Seeing being seen (Figure 1 lower left)

In the case of the nude looking at us, the viewer, she is seeing us and she is aware of being seen by us.
The view is reciprocal – both are aware of seeing and being seen – and her little smile seems to be somewhat inviting, although not really committing. Since the other figures are – for the moment – not looking at us, her gaze and her smile is quite personal.

This intimate reciprocity is a special feature of Manet’s Luncheon and, in my view, accounts for much of its enduring attraction for viewers. We find the engaging gaze of a central figure in many paintings before and after Manet. Rembrandt and Velazquez in the previous posts provided great examples. But in Luncheon Manet succeeds to engage us in a way which I have not (yet) found in another painter.

In most cases, “seeing being seen” on part of the figure in the painting is only an imputation by the viewer. Following the laws of perspective, the figure looking out must see the viewer looking in. A common space for seeing each other is produced.
But the viewer does not feel addressed personally, even when affected emotionally; there could be any other viewer in front of the painting. The viewer does experience “being seen” but does not feel “engaged personally while looking in”. Portraits typically create this experience.

In other cases, there is an explicit attempt to communicate with the viewer to arouse certain feelings, for instance, of sympathy for the depicted poor child or of being threatened by an aggressor. An obvious case are erotic paintings where the depicted figure tries to allure the viewer. But this kind of “story” is not supported by Manet’s scenes.

In my view, the difference is that the viewer does not recognize and accept the woman “as a person” but only “as a painting of a person”. For the personal experience, it seems necessary that the depicted person somehow claims the “recognition as a person” successfully. How Manet achieves this – in different ways in his figurative paintings – is the secret of his painting and is, I think, at the heart of his realism. His figures – at least the focal figure – are realistic because they are recognized as subjects and not just (visual) objects. The question is not just “What pictures want?” (Mitchell) or the “facingness” (Fried) of the painting, but that there occurs a “picture act” (Bredekamp) on part of the specific person depicted.

What seems to be essential in the case of Luncheon, is the element of a specific collusion with the viewer, an invitation to move around in the space defined by the gazes in the painting – not defined by the law of perspective (violated by Manet) and without committing to a “story” (avoided by Manet).
Besides the sympathetic gaze of the nude, this invitation is created by a puzzle:
– on the one hand, the lack of coordination of the gazes calling for an explanation
– on the other hand, the impression of a “staged” or constructed scene suggesting the existence of a hidden meaning.
This impression is enhanced by the fact that there is a minimal set of actors and that any obvious interpretation or narrative – like two ladies and two gentlemen having some fun – is not readily supported.

Thus, we are led to engage and to solve the puzzle – and solutions or interpretation have been suggested for over 150 years now. (My Seeing Being Seen is just another humble example among countless others exploring the puzzle with a diagrammatic approach.)

In the Luncheon, facing the nude, the collusion is enhanced by a layer of ironic distancing, because it seems to be Victorine, the model, who is giving the little smile rather than the sympathetic but anonymous nude sitting there on the grass. The smile of the nude would make the viewer feel “caught looking”, which we find in many erotic paintings and pictures, also in the exhibition of the Salon at Manet’s time. The smile of Victorine adds a specific subjectivity of “seeing being seen”.

This double-layered collusion between figure/model and viewer is needed in Manet’s scheme only when the First looking at the viewer is the focal figure and when her smile may be misinterpreted as “telling the wrong story”. Manet wants to invite us into a social space but not into an erotic scene.

For instance, in The Balcony (1868) with Berthe Morisot looking to the left out of the painting, Fanny Claus is in the role of the First engaging the viewer but needs no ironic distancing. Her “seeing being seen” supports the public situation on the balcony. (The fact that the insider may know the true identities of the models is not an essential element of the painting, it “works” without that knowledge.)

In another case, Nana (1877), the girl is looking somewhat flirtingly at the viewer, “seeing being seen” (Figure 2). The smile fits the “story” of a high-class prostitute finishing her make-up with her client waiting on the sofa.
Figure 2:

There is a lot of irony in the painting, but no distancing between the model (an actress) and her role in the painting. (The “story” is one reason why Nana is not a “clear case” of Manet’s scheme, as I will try to show in a later post.)

This experience of “seeing being seen” by both the viewer and a figure in the painting is an important element in Manet’s scheme. However, variations of the scheme may place this mutual experience between viewer and depicted figure into a side role, as in The Balcony.

Seeing others [while unaware of seeing being seen]
(Figure 1 lower right)

Seeing others (usually, but not always) within the picture space is the role of the Second in Manet’s scheme establishing the social space from within. This gaze invites the viewer to follow its line of sight in the picture, a natural reaction of the viewer, and to look at the other participants and/or to imagine what this person is seeing of the scene what we might not be able to see. This gaze places the person into a position in the painting where we cannot see his face directly creating a need for us to change position (or to hope that person to change), since we also want to see who is looking and complete our view of the scene by the view of the other.

Imagining, as viewer, moving to the left among the trees and stepping into the line of sight of the man to the right, we would see his face looking in our direction. But his seeing us will be non-engaging, perhaps not even noticing the viewer between the trees looking in his direction. He is looking at the other two figures trying to get their attention. Maybe in the next moment, he will be following the gaze of the nude and see the viewer in front of the scene who is imagining seeing him from among the trees…But in this moment, the viewer is “seeing” someone who is not aware of “being seen”.

We experience this often in busy streets when other people appear to be looking at us, but not really “seeing” us, and unaware “being seen” by us.

Actually, I found it quite difficult to depict this “accidental” gaze in my painting (Figure 1 lower right), because somehow, as the painter (or the photographer), one has to prevent the viewer from engaging with the gaze directed toward him or her. In a real-life situation, we simply “know” that a gaze is not “meaning us”, and we avoid catching the attention by looking only peripherally at the person.
In paintings, we often find this accidental gaze at the viewer, but then, we are – as viewers – treated as accidental onlookers (through the “window” of the frame) and/or we are obviously excluded from the “story” being told.
Walking around Manet’s painting, as imagined here, we tend to transfer the immediate engagement experienced with the first person into the imagined entering of the line of sight of the second person. Showing the gaze of the Second as a gaze not “seeing being seen” is not really achieved in Figure 1. Manet, however, is frequently depicting persons as not really – that is, fully aware – seeing the viewer or other persons in the painting.

For instance, puzzling in looking back at the man in Figure 1 (lower right) is the fact that he is not really focusing on any of the two others. We sense this already when looking from the front. There it adds to the lack of readability of the situation. While we have assigned to the Second in Manet’s scheme the role to establish the picture space within the painting by looking at the other figures, we now see more clearly that this does not imply a clear focus on those others. In The Breakfast (1868), we have seen that the man sitting at the breakfast to the right (the Second) is looking across the picture space without regarding the boy in front or the maid in the background.

In his later paintings, varying the scheme, Manet will often apply this “accidental” gaze, not clearly focusing the viewer or something in the picture space, to create a distancing effect while at the same time zooming in closer toward the subject.
The most famous example is, of course, A Bar at the Folies-Bergère (1882), his last great masterpiece.
However, in view of MyManet, the gaze of the barmaid may be seen in different ways.
We will return to it in a following post.

Here, we keep in mind for Manet’s scheme that “seeing being seen” might be a rather peripheral vision for those figures who are establishing the social space by seeing others. Moreover, seeing others will often – and for Manet typically – not imply focusing clearly on those others.

Seeing [without seeing something in the visual space or being aware of] being seen (Figure 1 upper left)

This case is characteristic of the man sitting next to the nude, the Third in Manet’s scheme. In the upper left of Figure 1, the viewer tried to intercept the gaze of the other man somewhere in mid-air looking down at him.

But the viewer will not imagine that the man will be “seeing being seen” by somebody up there.

For the viewer, the case recognizes that we are aware – when looking at somebody – whether his or her gaze is “looking at” somebody (or something) in the common visual space, or not.
The gaze may be directed “inside” trying to think or (day-)dream of something not present, or directed “outside” imagining something not present in the visual field. Such a gaze can overlook an onlooking person within the painting or overlook the outside viewer even when being directly in the line of sight of the person.

Walking “around” the painting, this case is easily confounded with the unfocused gaze of the Second above.
Imagining looking into the face of a person not clearly focusing, and
imagining looking into the face of a person not looking at something in visual space becomes easily a matter of interpretation.
But in principle the distinction is clear: there is a difference between the unfocused gaze often required in a more complex situation involving e.g. multiple participants, and the unfocused gaze not looking at anything in the common visual field.

Seeing [what is] being seen [by others within or outside the picture space]
(Figure 1 upper right)

We communicate about the persons and objects in our common visual space effectively without thinking much about the fact that the visual field is different for each one of us. We see the objects from different angels and face some people while others are looking away from us.

Routinely, we complete the partial view we have to a 3-dimensional visual space with 3-dimensional objects. We assume that we can “see” what other persons see, since moving around we continuously complete and update our view of objects and experience that the other persons do the same.

Thus, “seeing what is seen by others” poses no problem, unless seeing what we from our perspective cannot see at the moment becomes relevant in the interaction. This applies typically to things in our back, to the other side of things in our view, and things beyond our visual field.
It applies also to our own face. This is why the faces of others are so important. Their faces and reactions show us who we are.
An interesting case, often explored in paintings, is the view into the mirror which shows what the viewer or the person in the painting might otherwise not see. The problem with mirrors is that they show the things reversed. Placing a mirror behind the group in Luncheon, the viewer would see a reversed image – not what the person in the background would see!
Manet’s most famous painting featuring a mirror is, of course, A Bar at the Folies-Bergére (1882). We return to the case of mirrors when we look at this masterpiece.

Paintings are 2-dimensional, unlike sculptures and installations, and, therefore, we cannot walk around and get the 3-dimensional picture. Paintings showing a naturalistic perspective only succeed in pinning the viewer down to one position. Paintings showing persons aggravate the problem, because in reality they, in particular, are moving and changing their perspective on things. Casting them into a system of physical perspective only makes matters worse.

MyManet suggests that Manet – among other painterly means – tried to find a solution by detaching the figures from a fixed frame or background creating a kind of mobile with puppets hanging “on stage” in a picture space. This, we have shown already in previous posts. He was fascinated especially by Velazquez’ way of placing a figure into a diffuse background, a strategy, which Manet applied, for instance, in The Fifer (1866).
Another strategy by Manet is, in view of MyManet, the creation of a social space reaching beyond the picture space and stabilizing, as it were, the mobile by the system of gazes and gestures. By not using the perspective system and physical space, he allows for the imagination of the viewer to move more freely within and around the painting.

In this strategy, the perspective from the back becomes an important element.
(Alternatively, as we have seen in previous examples, Manet closes the background and moves the picture space towards the viewer. That way, like in a small theatre, the viewer is already “in the middle of it” and needs no “view from the back”.)

Handling the view from the back is, however, a delicate challenge.
In Luncheon, we find the other woman not looking straight at the group, although she is clearly oriented toward the group.

If we imagine the woman in the background looking up and straight at the group, the viewer – or an unrepresented person next to the viewer – would be in her line of sight. The viewer might feel an urge to follow the gaze and look away from the painting to the left or right in the viewer’s space. Rembrandt played with this effect, as we have seen in the last post. Manet avoids this effect, presumably because he wants no distraction from the engaging gaze of the first woman.

The “Other” in his scheme is never competing for the attention of the viewer but suggesting another position and perspective to be taken by the viewer completing his or her view by imagining “seeing what is being seen by others”.

In MyManet, we assume that Manet is exploring these complex views with his scheme. The Luncheon on the Grass is his model case. Moving his actors around in the picture space, their gazes create different compositional challenges in those paintings, as we have seen.

The greatest challenge Manet addressed when he reduced the figures to one person and substituted the other participants in his scheme by mirror images: A Bar at the Folies-Bergére.

Let us take a look at this masterpiece!

A personal note: Unfortunately, I got hit by Covid and I am still recovering.
This post is about a week late and turned out to be quite a demanding effort.

Hope to see you well in two weeks!

More on Diagrams and Paintings (P23)

By Richard Pieper

On December 22, 2021

In Edouard Manet

In the previous post, I raised the question what I have learned from submitting paintings with a strong diagrammatic element – applying concepts and ideas from MyManet – to the Annual Exhibition of my art society.
One conclusion was that I still have a lot to learn as an aspiring painter.

But I also learned from the experience more about Manet and how the diagrammatic element in his scheme results from the content, from the objects and relations depicted.
If diagrammatic structures are intimately related to the content of Manet’s painting, then “painting diagrams” is one way to understand his art.

Figure 1: Compairing two Group Portraits

How innovative Manet’s approach is can be understood better, perhaps, when we compare it with the tradition of group portraits in the Dutch painting tradition of Rembrandt and Frans Hals.
Two examples are shown in Figure 1.

Heike Baare (2009) has offered an inspiring analysis of Manet’s multi-figure paintings comparing them with those group portraits. (Actually, she refers especially to the art historian Alois Riegl who is cited also by other critics of Manet, e.g. Michael Lüthy and Richard Wollheim referred to in previous posts.)
Here, I will extract – irresponsibly simplifying her and Riegl’s arguments – only one interesting observation on the problem of group portraits:

Group portraits show a number of persons which are identifiable as particular individuals, for instance the participants of a lecture (Rembrandt) or of a board of an institution (Hals). The painter needs to arrange the portraits (or whole figures) in a composition and has two options,

either to arrange them in a formal composition distributing them somehow balanced in the picture space,
or to show the figures engaged in some activity which assigns each figure a meaningful position and provides a “story” about their relations.

Obviously, these are not alternatives but can be combined in varying degrees.

Rembrandt choses to provide an underlying “story” showing the participants of a lesson;
Hals arranges the portraits formally in the picture space just indicating a common physical space.

The more the painter refrains from offering an internal “story”, the more the viewer is put into the position to provide a unity to the group and will feel the need to invent an external story to make sense of the painting.
This is especially the case, because some of the figures – following the logic of portraits – may look at the viewer and engaging him or her.

In the case of Rembrandt, the figure in the upper centre is looking into the general direction of the viewer, but not engaging the viewer; in the case of Hals, two women appear to engage with the viewer, while the focus of the other three is unclear to the viewer just as in many portraits.

In as much as the viewer fails to detect some unifying relationships, the unity of the painting will rely solely on the formal composition.

Balancing the composition becomes a formidable issue, since all portrayed individuals want to be adequately represented. Nobody wants to play a side role – unless the role is grounded in the social position in the group, as in case of the lecturer in Rembrandt’s painting.

To solve the problem, Rembrandt finds a quite ingenious solution:
He shows all of the figures as being attentive to the lecture and five of them to the book in the foreground.
This way, everybody is sharing the same role, except for the lecturer who is obviously in a special position but not enhancing his role by engaging the viewer.

More radical is Rembrandt’s solution in The Syndics (Figure 2), where the figures are attentive to somebody next to the viewer outside the picture space and in front of the painting.

At the same time, Rembrandt is refraining from “telling a story” – like he did in The Anatomy Lesson. Instead, the gazes create a dynamic which, on the one hand, is much more compelling than the additive portraits by Hals, while, on the other hand, avoiding the impression of a genre painting telling a story about everyday life. And the viewer is assigned a very important role in the composition.
Rembrandt is quite daring in The Syndics, and the painting must have fascinated Manet on his visit to The Netherlands.

Figure 2: Rembrandt The Syndics of the Draper’s Guild (1662)

Rembrandt’s reaching out to the space of the viewer invites a comparison with Manet’s scheme:

The central figure might best be seen as thinking with a gaze beyond the painting – as a Third in Manet’s scheme.

The gazes of the three figures to the right and the figure on the edge to the left dominate the painting paying attention to an unrepresented “other” outside the painting. Their role in Manet’s scheme is comparable to the Second (Berthe Morisot) in The Balcony gazing outside of the picture space to the left (see Figure 3).

Figure 3: Relating the gazes in Rembrandt’s The Syndics to the gazes in Manet’s The Balcony

Rembrandt shows three figures in this role accentuating this gaze. We can assume that this is partly due to the fact that he has to somehow accommodate six figures. Comparing it with Manet’s The Balcony (left side of Figure 3), we might, therefore, eliminate two of them as redundant.

Then, Rembrandt applies the strategy of The Anatomy Lesson of creating dynamic tension by a common focus of these gazes. But there, he captured their gazes by the book within the painting (see Figure 2), now their gazes reach out of the picture space. But the three gazes are crossing the picture space meeting the gaze of the fourth figure at the position of the unrepresented “other”. Thus, they are more contributing to the unity of composition than the disrupting gaze to the left in The Balcony. Re-arranging the gazes in Rembrandt following the composition of The Balcony (see the left side of Figure 3) demonstrates the disruptive effect. Manet is anchoring the composition with the gaze of the First (the lady to the right engaging the viewer).

This role of the First has no direct counterpart in Rembrandt’s composition. However, there is another interesting feature: The second figure in Rembrandt (from the left) might imply another unrepresented “other” to the right of the viewer. Thus, the viewer finds herself or himself between two other persons in front of the painting which has a similar engaging effect as Manet’s First.

In Manet’s scheme, this figure would occupy the role of the “other” completing the social space by a perspective on the group from the back (see left of Figure 3) rather than – like Rembrandt – populating the space in front of the painting with another viewer. With Michael Fried, we might say that Rembrandt produces a “facingness” of the whole painting without implying one viewer at a specific position in front of the painting. Still, the painting is showing a unity arising from the gazes within the painting, which is missing in the “additive” faces in Frans Hals’ composition.

Manet’s approach is even more disruptive by confronting the viewer with very diverging gazes which appear not to be harmonized by a unifying interaction with the space of the viewer. Worse still, the space of the viewer itself is ambiguously defined, since in front of the picture space the viewer seems to be hanging in mid-air (or standing at an opposite window?) and in the background the viewer is confronted with an almost totally black space which only indicates that someone is or could be looking out toward the group and the viewer.

In view of MyManet, comparing the paintings by Hals, Rembrandt and Manet, we see that

Hals presupposes that the viewer – guided by the formal composition – will be coordinating the group of portraits into the unity of a painting.
Rembrandt creates a dynamic of gazes within the painting producing a unity which engages the viewer in front of the painting.
Manet creates a complex social space through gazes relating the figures within the painting to unrepresented “others” – including the viewer – outside the painting and risking the unity of the painting in the process.

As pointed out in Post 20 discussing The Balcony, Manet supports the unity of the composition with a very strong frame in bright green colour. However, standing in front of the painting (as I had the opportunity a few months ago) one cannot help but realizing the tension created by the divergence of the social space of gazes that is only tamed by the physical space of a railed balcony.

The problem of the traditional Dutch group portrait, as sketched out above, was to decide (and to solve by composition) which role the viewer had to assume. The viewer could be enlisted to coordinate externally the portraits of the group by an interpretation, or the activities and relationships of the figures within the painting would internally provide a unity (“story”) which the viewer could readily engage with. The latter strategy ran the risk that the internal relations would assign roles to the portrayed persons which they would not readily accept.

This problem is, obviously, also important in Manet’s multi-figure paintings. Although his problem is not so much that the individuals want to have a fair place in the painting. Manet’s figures are identifiable, but not intended as a group portrait. They are typically family members, friends or professional models who will accept their assigned role (Fanny Claus, the second woman next to Berthe Morisot in The Balcony was apparently not so happy with her role.)

However, the basic problem applies also in Manet’s case. Since he aims to reduce the “story” regulating the relationships among the group and with the viewer, the issue of the “unity” within the painting shifts to the formal composition and/or to the unifying role of the viewer. The problem is enhanced by the fact that Manet deliberately violates the rules of perspective breaking up the physical space within the painting and, thus, not extending the picture space into the space of the viewer. The viewer finds herself or himself in a rather insecure position in front of the painting, or – as MyManet suggests – as viewing a scene “on stage”. Manet’s paintings show not the unified space of naturalism, his realism is a re-construction of “what is seen” and “what exists”.

The interpretation of Manet’s paintings is, therefore, often driven by an alternative between

focusing on the formal composition providing a unity with painterly means, and
focusing on the “story behind” the illegible gestures and activities of the figures.

Thus, the “modernity” of Manet’s painting is interpreted either as revealed in his first steps away from naturalism and toward abstraction in modern art (in the following generation of painters), or in Manet’s representation of the fragmented and socially alienated life of contemporary Paris with painterly means.

Regarding the first alternative,
with the loss or avoidance of a narrative, the “facingness” or expression of the painting becomes important, but the viewer is losing a “face” because he or she is addressed as an increasingly anonymous viewer (if not customer) who is as alienated as the portrayed figures.

Regarding the second alternative,
Baare refers especially to the sociologist Georg Simmel – cited often by other critics as mentioned in previous posts. Baare misses, however, an essential feature of Simmel’s sociology. A generation after Manet, Simmel is not only the analyst of modern urban life and culture, he is also the founder of a “formal sociology” and social network analysis. Today’s diagrams of social relations or “sociometry” is heavily indebted to Simmel. Just like Manet – in view of MyManet – tries to establish the internal and external unity of his group paintings not through a “story” but through an underlying model of social relations in social space within and around the picture space, Simmel is looking for the infrastructure of social relations which is carrying the diversity of cultural lifestyles. (Interestingly, Simmel sides with Rembrandt’s internal vitality in his view on art, while the focus on external form is characteristic of his sociology; see Georg Simmel, Rembrandt, 1917).

In the Post on Manet’s Realism, I have suggested that Manet’s realism is inspired by “reasoned images” – by drawings of scientific objects like the human body or animals and plants. In case of Manet’s scheme, the “scientific object” is the human group and the structure of basic human relations as constituted by the gazes within the picture space and to agents not represented in the painting.
Formal or compositional aspects are closely interrelated with aspects of content.

Unlike Rembrandt, however, Manet is not trying to engage the viewer by the imposing vitality and subjectivity of the figures. The content of social space – created by the gazes and gestures – retains in Manet an objective formal character. The role of the viewer is more complex, the viewer is asked to reconstruct the social space within and around the picture space, not just to “face” the painting.

In “Seeing Being Seen”, I tried to capture the role of the viewer in reconstructing a social space by “walking around” the group. The painting assumes the character of an “installation” as pointed out in the first post.
“Seeing Being Seen” addresses directly the content of Luncheon on the Grass – the way gazes structure the social scene depicted.

In the next post, I will take a closer look at the different meanings of “Seeing” and “Being Seen”.

See You in two weeks – in 2022!

On Paintings, Diagrams and Exhibitions (P22)

By Richard Pieper

On December 6, 2021

In Edouard Manet

Sometimes life interferes in significant ways with the plans of human beings – actually, it does that on a quite regular basis.

In my case, the plans for this post were intercepted by the Annual Exhibition of the Järvenpää Art Society of which I am a member.
Aspiring to full membership, I need contributions accepted by the jury.

So, I submitted these three paintings:

Figure 1: My contributions to the Annual Exhibition 2021

“After Matisse”

“A Bar near Folies-Bergère”

“Seeing Being Seen”

The event clashed with my plans into different ways:

The preparation of the three paintings submitted took much more time and effort than anticipated. That may be considered a rather usual miscalculation on part of a novice in the “art business”.
But it made it necessary to postpone the publication of my post.
Sorry about that!
The other interference occurred with the planned content of the post and was equally unexpected.
The jury accepted one of my three paintings and excluded two others.
This is also an event to be expected and accepted, but it got me thinking about the reasons why these two were excluded.
These reflections suggested a different theme for the post.

So, I would like to share my reflections on the jury’s decision, because the issue is directly related to MyManet – both paintings present themes on Manet!

The problem may be put in the following way:
Did the jury select a painting and reject two diagrams?

Let me state at the outset that I am not questioning the decision of the jury.
I would like to be – however modestly – proud of having a painting accepted for the Annual Exhibition.
So, to be proud I must assume that the jury was competent making that positive decision!
But then, it makes no sense to question their competence in the other two cases…
Besides and obviously, I have a lot to learn and to experiment on my way to expressing myself in artwork. The experience of preparing my submissions to the event demonstrated that again.
The task of the jury was to evaluate the quality of the paintings and I accept their verdict.
Thus, the quality of the three paintings is not my concern here (but in front of the easel).

My question is more self-critical and, in part, conceptual, and related to MyManet:

Looking at the three paintings, one difference between the selected “After Matisse” and the two “Manets” stands out:

“After Matisse” (original: Still Life with Oranges 1913) is a still life which does not try “to make a statement” beyond “pure painting”. It just offers an art experience – “art for art’s sake” – as is typical for Henri Matisse. This was also my goal for the free copy. “After Matisse” is not a strict copy, the dimensions are already different – the copy (40×40), the original (94×83). My version tried to catch my impression of the original (as if it would be a still life itself) – and learn something about painting in the process.
The two “Manets” are not copies, they are “about” Manet and cite elements of his paintings. “A Bar near Folies-Bergère” (acryl, 80×100), obviously, cites Manet’s famous “A Bar at the Folies-Bergère” (1882), but it includes also references to four other bar paintings of Manet (besides a citation of Velazquez).
I will return to my painterly interpretation of Manet in a later post when looking at the original Bar as his last application of – what I call – Manet’s scheme.“Seeing Being Seen. Manet’s Luncheon on the Grass” (digital drawing) presents a sketch inspired by the gazes of the four figures of Manet’s scheme in Luncheon (lower left)
– with the gaze of the First (the nude) looking back at the viewer,
– the gaze of the Second looking towards the other two persons,
– the gaze of the Third to the more distant “authority” beyond the picture space, and
– the view looking “over the shoulder” of the “Other”, the bather in the background.
Thus, the sketch combines the different views which the viewer would have walking around the group and meeting their eyes (or looking over the shoulder).
The participant viewer would experience “seeing being seen”.

Both “Manets” are “about Manet” in the sense that they are conceptually inspired by MyManet. They are not only paintings but illustrating arguments: They support the general thesis that Manet is applying – consciously, or not – a certain scheme.
In case of “Seeing Being Seen”, this is quite obvious; in case of “A Bar near Folies-Bergère”, it is more subtle, since the painting presents an own application of the scheme. However, the accentuation of the perspectives of the main actors by straight lines crossing the painting suggests quite strongly that there is some kind of model or scheme at work.

While the “Matisse” is straight forward a painting, the “Manets” can be seen (also) as diagrams.

The question arises whether or to what extent the jury preferred paintings over diagrams.

Or, since I do not want to discuss the criteria of the jury:
Did I make the mistake that I painted (too much) diagrams rather than paintings?

Clearly, in MyManet the aim is to interpret Manet’s paintings with the support of diagrams.
Did this aim influence my painting of the “Manets” too much?

Another question may be what I learned about MyManet when trying to paint with his scheme or diagram in mind.

This question, I will take up in the following post.

First, let us look at the differences between paintings and diagrams.

The question assumes that there is a substantial difference between paintings and diagrams and that their principles are, to some extent, in conflict with each other.

So, what is the difference between a painting and a diagram?
There is, of course, a wealth of literature on this issue.
And the question very quickly leads into a deep discussion about “what is art – and what not?”.

So, here I like to share only some personal reflections motivated by the three paintings.

We might expect a categorical difference between the two concepts based on semiotics.
Take, for example, the well-known distinction between icon, index, and symbol in the semiotics of Charles S. Peirce. This distinction is derived from his fundamental triadic system, here applied to the level of signs:
– an Icon presents certain qualities which it shares with the objects it presents;
– an index represents a certain relation between qualities or aspects,
often a causal law is depicted;
– a symbol is interpreting qualities and relations in some meaningful context.

Following a triadic scheme, we might distinguish between pictures, diagrams, and text. Then, diagrams and paintings appear, at first sight, as categorially different. However, Peirce saw diagrams foremost as visual schemes distinct from logical relations and symbolic language (another triad in Peirce’s system). Therefore, pictures and diagrams both belong to our visual ways of “world making”
which Peirce, by the way, believed to be quite fundamental to our understanding of the world.

On the level of painting, we would distinguish – following the triadic scheme – between the painterly means (like colour, line, shape, brushwork, etc.), the formal composition or design relating elements, and the narrative (“story”) contextualizing the elements. We would point out that Manet is clearly focusing on painterly means, that he follows in his multi-figure paintings a certain scheme, and that he is decidedly avoiding “telling stories”.

In this view, “After Matisse” is clearly focusing on painterly means, “Seeing Being Seen” is the most diagrammatic work, and “A Bar near the Folies-Bergére” attempts a more interpretative application of the scheme.

However, we would not expect that there is a categorial problem in combining painterly and compositional or formal aspects in a painting.

Let us agree that diagrams and paintings are both visual ways of “world making”, but have different aims:

Diagrams cast information and relations or patterns into a visual form.
The content of a diagram is usually described in a text, but typically the content displayed in the diagram cannot be adequately and practically formulated in a text. Some information and insights depend on the visual medium. “The Art of the Diagram” (Schmidt-Burkhardt 2019) consists in creating a representation which allows us to grasp essential insights visually, literally seeing the pattern in a flood of data. Modelling and experimenting on the computer has enhanced diagrammatic methods dramatically. We are understanding and “making worlds” with the aid of “beautiful evidence” (Tufte 2006) represented in diagrams.
The “truth” of the diagram resides in the adequate representation of the world including possible, past, or future worlds; it depends on knowledge about the world and adds to it.
Paintings do not necessarily represent anything in the world, although they often do or are perceived as representing something. “Seeing-in” a painting something represented or “seeing-something-as” a work of art is not an act of simply recognizing an object in the painting or a painting as art.
On the one hand, our ways of seeing are culturally developed. When we see faces or horses in the shapes of clouds of a painting (or in nature), this does not mean there are those objects independently of our ways of seeing. Our perception applies culturally learned distinctions and patterns, but we also apply these patterns in an act of creative imagination, it is a way of “world making” changing in history and with societal circumstances (Davies 2009).
On the other hand, in the creation of each painting the artist is not simply applying our culturally developed ways of seeing. Painting is also an act of creative imagination and of “world making” which, in turn, may suggest new ways of seeing. This creativity is limited only by the material restrictions of the production. In the virtual worlds of computers, these limits can be stretched to the limits of our innate visual capacities.
Boundaries for this creativity are not so much in the process of production expanded by ever new technologies and media, but in our culturally mediated ways of perception, our understanding of what is art, and to what extent we want to restrict our concept of painting (e.g. to the application of lines, shapes and colours to a 2-dimensional flat surface rather than including sculptures, installations, performances, holograms, film, photography, etc.).
The “truth” of painting resides in the way it enriches our aesthetic experience of the world and by (eventually) being perceived as belonging to the “world of art”. The cycle of production and reception of ways of seeing involves learning processes and takes time. In the case of Manet, his contemporary audience did not (yet) understand how to align his painterly innovations with established ways of seeing.

The aims of adding to our knowledge and the aim of enriching our aesthetic experience do not necessarily harmonize. Often, we find one aim pursued on the costs of the other. However, as the history of diagrams and paintings demonstrates, diagrams can be very artful without violating the requirements of knowledge, and paintings can incorporate new knowledge about the world without losing their aesthetic quality.

A good example working both ways is the well-known drawing of the proportions of the human body by Leonardo da Vinci (Figure 2) who was an artist and a scientist as well as an engineer.

Figure 2: Leonardo da Vinci (1490) The Vitruvian Man.
The proportions of the human body according to Vitruvius

and four versions generated by the diagram

This diagram is over 500 years old, and it still inspires generating new ideas.

As shown in Figure 3, I have extracted four versions from the original scheme. We can easily imagine that these figures will motivate rather different paintings.
Moreover, the figures suggest quite different socio-psychological states of the person depicted.
We might even associate the four basic emotional and interactional states described in Post 16 with the figures:

Figure 1 conveys a rather elated and expansive mood reaching beyond the confines of the drawing
Figure 2 seems rather down to earth established in his own world
Figure 3 is reminding of the proud and victorious sportsman or warrior
Figure 4 appears to be rather insecure and vulnerable, perhaps even lying on the ground.

Certainly, these interpretations are not the only ones suggested by the figures, but they demonstrate that diagrams can give rise to a variation of forms and even content (not only) in painting – just like Manet’s scheme, where moving the basic roles of the scheme into different positions of the composition generates different challenges.

Thus, diagrams can be integral and productive structures of paintings, not only on the level of formal composition but also on the level of content.

I have to conclude that the question about the exclusion of my “Manets” has less to do with their diagrammatic content than with the quality of my painterly means. Actually, the decision to submit the “Matisse” was motivated by my anticipation that the focus on painting rather than supporting MyManet with paintings may prove to be the more successful strategy.

Which leaves us with the question, what I learned about Manet’s scheme trying to apply it in my own paintings.
This will be the topic of the following post.

See you in two weeks!

Manet and Political Power (P21)

By Richard Pieper

On November 6, 2021

In Edouard Manet

For some critics, Manet is foremost a painter interested in the subject only as an occasion to paint – and avoiding a clear political message.

For other interpreters of his art, Manet is one of the most political painters of his time and an engaged participant in the political events.

His most political painting – The Execution of Emperor Maximilian – is claimed as an example for both positions:

Figure 1: The Execution of Emperor Maximilian (1867) and The Barricade (1871)

On the one hand,
the painting is seen as a case for Manet’s search for “pure art for art’s sake”.
How else can you account for the lack of great emotions and dramatic action in a painting of an execution?
On the other hand,
Manet is seen as searching for an alternative to traditional, pompous history painting and making a political statement exactly by frustrating expectations.
Usually, The Barricade (1871) – depicting a dramatic scene of soldiers shooting activists of the Parisian Commune is shown to demonstrate that Manet is also a political artist.

In this post, I will not comment at any length on this debate.
Certainly, being a political painter in Manet’s time was totally different from today. The execution in June, 1867, was the result of Napoleon III’s attempt to install Maximilian as Emperor of Mexico. The Mexican insurgents under Benito Juarez liberated their country, and captured Maximilian who was left behind by the French army retreating to France.
Napoleon III strictly prohibited any artistic comments on the event.

So, Manet used “a razor-sharp irony” (Rubin) hiding his political commentary in subtle ways.
The sergeant to the right looked much like Napoleon III in the second version. The soldiers’ uniforms were similar to French uniforms. Thus, it could seem that French soldiers were executing the Emperor.
Although Manet changed that in later versions, the painting was excluded from the Salon exhibition. The painting was not shown in France during his lifetime (only on an exhibition in the USA, without any great success). Manet himself, however, considered it one of his most valuable paintings.

For the description of the historical event itself, I refer to the extensive literature.
A most informative account, I have found in Joachim Kaak (2014) who discusses Manet’s political paintings and demonstrates the political undercurrent also in other works (unfortunately only in German; but see Sandblad 1954; Hanson 1977; Fried 1998).

For MyManet, two aspects provide an important background:

First, there was an intensive public debate about the event (not only) in France. Manet followed it closely and produced five versions of the painting starting already in July and incorporating new information about the event as it became available.
This in itself testifies to his political engagement and his determination to create a realistic as well as symbolically convincing representation.

Second, the public reception and evaluation of the event changed during the process, at least for republicans like Manet, from seeing the execution as an horrific crime of Mexican bandits to recognizing a regular army legitimately liberating their country from a foreign regime.
Accordingly, for instance, the uniforms of the soldiers changed after the first version (Figure 3).

At least equally important for the changes – as “updating” the content and evaluation of the event – were the compositional problems encountered by Manet.
Some problems are best understood as resulting from his new realistic approach to historical painting. These issues are usually addressed by commentators.
Other problems concerning the structural composition and resulting in changes over the versions are often noted but not sufficiently explained. These are questions as to why Manet experimented with certain changes.

In view of MyManet,
these WHY-question may be better understood as motivated by Manet’s scheme!

This does not turn The Execution into a clear case of the scheme but throws some light on the development of the final version.

Let us look first at the approach of Manet to painting historical scenes.

An illuminating way may be the comparison of The Execution with one of the “most famous History paintings” (Lüthy) by Manet’s idol, Diego Velazquez The Surrender of Breda (1635) and Goya’s The Third of May (1814) which is even more widely known.

Both paintings are certainly great examples of history painting and motivating Manet.
But they also demonstrate what Manet not wanted to do.

Figure 2: Comparing history paintings

Velazquez’s painting is showing a simple interaction – the surrender of the key of the city of Breda – and he places the scene into an impressive setting of two opposing armies and a burning city in the background. The painting is lacking the pathos of most history paintings which Manet despised. It displays a realism which Manet admired without failing to express the symbolic importance of the event. It rather shows a quite human touch between the two generals exchanging the key. It even includes the viewer by at least four participants (and a horse) looking directly out of the picture, one at the edge to the left in a position Manet chose for himself in Music in the Tuileries. Another central soldier in a white uniform (inspiring Goya?) is rather absorbed in own thoughts reminding of the soldier to the right in The Execution.

Manet follows Velazquez in avoiding the pathos and showing the human side of the event, but he clearly wants to simplify the scene by a focus on the interaction and by eliminating the extensive historical setting.

Goya succeeds in bringing the focal interaction – the shooting – to the forefront.
But he loads the scene with emotion in a way which for Manet is too much drama.
Now, the violent event clearly calls for an emotional reaction in the viewer.
But Manet seems to have asked himself if there is a realistic way of showing a historic event in its timeless importance beyond the description of particular scene and avoiding Romantic “story telling” and “emotional drama”.

Critics often imply that Manet had to choose between emphasizing a Romantic narrative about the historical event or the formal structure of “pure painting” – less content implying more reliance on pictorial structure (Lüthy 2003).
But there is a third option: Showing an enduring social reality beneath the contingencies of the concrete historical event.
Manet’s realism wanted to capture the “universal symbol” (Sandblad) in the historical event,
or the “human condition” expressed in the “cold actuality” embedded in the action rather than a “gestured drama “(Hanson).

Beth Archer Brombert offers the wonderful formulation: “For Manet the human figure replaced nature as the source of meaning – human frailty, human mortality, human futility. And the light he cast on it has no beginning and no end; it is a light as eternal as nature.” (1996, p.215)
In MyManet, we would add – looking at The Execution – that realism of human figures replaces naturalism throwing an “eternal light” on a social reality encompassing not only the suffering of victims but also the exercise of power – and supporting reflection on the legitimacy of human actions (symbolized by the detached sergeant to the right).

The paintings by Velazquez and Goya are both political in the sense that they describe an important political event. They message is, however, very different.

Velazquez shows the moment after violence when building up trust is the political goal – even including the viewer in the hope for a future, legitimate regime.

Goya shows the moment of violence when the demonstration of brutal power is the goal of the regime while destroying the legitimacy of the act by the overwhelming tragedy imposed on victims and onlookers.

While Velazquez’s painting is inclusive, Goya’s is confrontational – within the painting and in relation to the viewer!

Obviously, Manet faces a problem:

How to show an act of political violence against an Emperor – perceived personally as a man of human dignity – without questioning the legitimacy of the quest for political freedom by the Mexicans? (Especially, when Napoleon III looms in the background as responsible for the event.)

The dualism opposing “good” on the left side and “evil” on the right side in Goya’s painting does not apply that readily in Manet’s case. The political dimension – the content of the painting – causes the problem of reflecting the complexity in a compositional form.

Usually, art historians point out that Manet was inspired by Goya’s dualistic composition, but the differences are often neglected or underrated. A major difference is that Manet distinguishes three major parts – the victims to the left, the soldiers in the centre, and a separate figure (or two) on the right (Figure 3).

Figure 3: The Execution of Emperor Maximilian – five versions 1867 to 1869, distinguished by their current location “Boston”, “London”, a lithograph (London), “Copenhagen”, and “Mannheim” (final version with added markings)

Mannheim

Juliet Wilson-Bareau (1986) in her detailed analysis of the five versions and the underpaintings (visible by X-ray) argues that Manet did not especially like Goya’s paintings. He “may have been more impressed by his prints and by the striking reproduction of the Third of May, just published in Paris. In the final analysis, Manet’s design was no doubt based as much on general patterns of representations of an execution, and his own deeply felt response to the accounts of the drama, as on any specific source (p. 51; emphasis added).”
She does not elaborate what these “general patterns” are, but she does emphasize that the most striking fact about the five versions is that the basic structure of three major parts was not changed.

This “general pattern” does not correspond to the dualistic opposition in Goya, and we should look for some other source.

So, let us consider Manet’s scheme as the underlying compositional pattern!

As a starting point, we should look at the overall strategy.
Especially in the first “Boston” version, Manet is moving the figures closer to the front, so they occupy nearly the whole canvas. “Zooming in” places the focus squarely on the participants, the historical scene is reduced to the scale of the human interaction.
The picture space is divided into three parts for the victims, the soldiers, and the figures to the right (black verticals in Figure 3). In the final version, the figure to the right, the sergeant, takes less space but is clearly distinguished. The three spaces appear to be illuminated by different light sources throwing shadows at distinct angles.

With this strategy, the figures are “on their own” – overarching historical or societal contexts of interpretation are eliminated. The interaction is unfolding between these individuals. This makes their gazes and gestures, their positions and relationships, all the more important and symbolic.

The three spaces help also to cope with another challenge, the number of participants.
Clearly, Manet’s scheme is blatantly overpopulated by three victims, six soldiers, a sergeant, and an officer, besides the crowd overlooking the wall. Sticking to a realistic approach, there is little he can do about it.
Therefore, spaces serve to group the participants; they are standing collectively for a position in the scheme.

This invites the application of a reduced version of Manet’s scheme to both Goya and Luncheon on the Grass as in Figure 4 (agents outside the picture space are left out here):

Figure 4: Reduced version of Manet’s scheme comparing
Goya’s Third of March and Luncheon on the Grass

Goya distinguishes only to spaces, “good” and “evil “or “white” and “black” figures, and perhaps the onlookers (green).

Manet differentiates a triad of First (red), Second (blue), and Third (purple), “Other”/onlooker (green), and absorbed figures (yellow) (as optional, not included in Luncheon).

Two differences are crucial:

Manet has to deal with the position of the First engaging the viewer, and
the relations within the picture space between Second and First/Third are now a dominant power relation which cannot contain a First directly engaging the viewer without distracting and subtracting from the force imposed on the victims.

The differences amount to (at least) six challenges or issues Manet must resolve – each answering to a question typically asked by critics:

WHY does Manet introduce the figure on the right?

In the “Boston” version, the answer seems obvious: Manet wants to engage the viewer like Velazquez above (Figure 2). The figure is clearly distinguished by his Mexican peasant dress from the other soldiers, while the second figure, presumably the commanding officer with a saber, is only indicated.

The problem is, as already mentioned, that this distracts from the central theme – the shooting. Manet seems to decide that an overt First (red) does not serve his purpose, the action has to speak for itself and confront the viewer.

But he does not give up his triadic scheme, he rather changes the role of the First. The separation and detachment of the sergeant preparing his rifle creates a very compelling focus engaging the viewer exactly by the contrast with the tragedy he seems to be oblivious to.

His space seems to call on the viewer to reflect on the meaning of the event. His role is exactly the same as the First in Luncheon, it is only defined by a gesture rather than a gaze. (Fried (1998) even suggests that the figure is an allusion to the painter Manet – with the soldier contemplating his rifle as a painter would his palette; this underlying relation, we also saw in Luncheon.)

WHY does Manet move the soldiers into the centre and detaches one soldier slightly from the group almost joining the space of the victims?

Many commentators see the soldiers as a compact group. This is certainly intended by Manet to enhance the impression of a brute force directed toward the victims. The direction is not only signified by the rifles, there is also a horizontal rhythm moving through the group created by the white patches of their belts, swords, and gaiters.
Still, the left soldier is somewhat detached and marks an own vertical line (white in Figure 3) running from his shoes (pointed in different directions!), through the white cloud above his head to the left edge of the onlooking peasants, even dividing the background into a rising hill and the cemetery with cypresses to the left. In the lithograph, Manet is even experimenting with a corner in the wall (black vertical) accentuating the soldier, and with a wall running now diagonally behind the victims distinguishing their space.

Manet has to find a solution for six or seven people (including the officer) to stand in for the position of the Second. Moreover, he faces the issue that those soldiers are neither clearly the “bad guys” nor the “good guys”. They are Mexican freedom fighters shooting French nobility. Manet choses to accentuate the position of the Second as a symbol in one soldier while grouping the others as an anonymous collective. Additionally, he signals the ambiguity in their mission by the slight separation and by diffusing the boundary between their space and the space of the victims by overlap or intrusion and by gun smoke.

WHY are the victims depicted rather blurred by smoke and not expressing their tragedy like in Goya?

One reason, certainly, rests in the ambiguous role of the victims. In one political perspective, they are the victims of violence; in another perspective, they are foreign imperialists, the Emperor, if not traitors to their own country, the generals. Manet surely wanted to avoid openly taking sides and to highlight the human tragedy beyond national politics. His political convictions were known, and he indicated them by subtle ironies to those who could “read between the lines”.
Another reason might be that Manet wanted the three victims forming a unity signifying the position of the Third. This position in his scheme addresses the “higher authority” beyond the picture frame. Their heads rise above the gun smoke, and their space has a strong vertical orientation continuing in the cypresses beyond the wall. Most important perhaps is the bright yellow rim of the Emperor’s sombrero reminding of a Christian saint (and Manet certainly did not miss the irony that a Mexican sombrero signified the Emperor’s appeal to a higher authority).

In the final version, Manet accentuated the individuality of the three victims in their gazes and gestures. Presumably, he did it to balance their impact against the prominence of the soldiers. But, perhaps, he wanted them to communicate with their gazes also across the painting to the sergeant appealing to his (and the viewers) reflection on the event – and closing the triadic relation in the scheme.

WHY is the officer eliminated in the final version?

Descriptions and photographs clearly contained the role of the commanding officer who gave the signal for the execution with his saber. Manet included him in all but the final version (white circle in Figure 3). In a social science perspective, I would have liked Manet to find a place for the officer, because it is somewhat questionable to leave the soldiers “on their own” in such an event. Micro politics must include the lowest level of management, as it were.
But it seems that Manet had compositional challenges to solve. For once, the saber introduced a distracting and disturbing directionality intersecting with the direction of the rifle of the sergeant exactly in the space between the soldiers and the sergeant. Moreover, the officer himself was closing the space between them. As discussed in WHY 2, the relative isolation of the sergeant was crucial for his role engaging the viewer. Thus, Manet deleted the officer in the final version and kept a sober greyish wall.

WHY did Manet give up the open background in the first two versions and introduced a wall?

Velazquez and Goya both staged their interaction in an open space signalling the historical and national relevance of the event. Manet “zoomed in” – as we said above – eliminating most of the context. The experiment with an open space in the “London” version was apparently so disappointing that Manet cut up the painting leaving us with fragments. Producing a wall as a background instead, is not very realistic; we would expect at least that the wall runs diagonally behind the victims as indicated in the lithograph. Equipped with Manet’s scheme, however, we should not be surprised. Closing the background with a coulisse, creating a narrow stage, and pushing the figures to the front is a familiar strategy by now.
This is the “puppet theatre” setting of Manet’s scheme!

WHY does Manet attribute a more prominent and defined role to the peasant crowd in the final version?

Again, referring to Manet’s scheme we should not be surprised. The onlookers, obviously, fulfil the role of the “Other” looking from the back. They create the social space of the scheme in their relationship to the scene and to the viewer in front of the painting. The onlookers, moreover, help to define the space of the soldiers by hovering exactly above them marking their space.

Manet does not always include this role explicitly, as we have seen, but in this case – compare Goya – and with a widely and controversially discussed public event, it is clearly asked by the scheme to include the “Other”. Fried (1998) confesses that he wished Manet had eliminated the onlookers. In his view, Manet made a great effort to control the “theatricality” of the painting in suppressing emotion and drama – and the onlookers convert the scene into a stage event!

Well, Fried may have a point here, but the enhancement of the role of the “Other” strengthens the view of MyManet. It demonstrates again the relevance of Manet’s scheme in explaining the changes to the final version.

In summary, we have seen that Manet’s scheme helps to interpret the “logic” behind the changes Manet introduced in the development of the final version. The painting is not a straightforward application of the scheme, but its composition is still inspired by it. In view of MyManet, the often attested “emptiness” or the impression of “absence” of meaning (Bataille 1955) is at least partly due to two fundamental problems Manet had to solve: the moral ambiguity of the event and the representation of positions in his scheme by groups rather than individuals. The result is a history painting which impresses by its lack of individual emotions and by the presence of a timeless tragedy.

I tried to demonstrate that Manet was a political painter. I also pointed out that Manet had to cope with an interdependence of content and form, of expressing social relations of power and representing these relations in his scheme. We encountered this interdependence between content and form already in the case of emotions. In the next post, I would like to take a closer look at this interdependence.

See You in two weeks!

On Manet’s Balcony (20)

By Richard Pieper

On October 22, 2021

In Edouard Manet

Enter Berthe Morisot!
In The Balcony, she is painted by Manet for the first time and certainly “frontstage”.
And I was able to see her last week visiting the Museum D’Orsay in Paris!
As expected, the original was much more impressive than any of the reproductions.

Manet took his inspiration from a painting by Goya (or from engravings made from the painting).
But again, there are interesting deviations making the painting a variation of Manet’s scheme!

Figure 1: Manet The Balcony (1868) and Goya Majas on a Balcony (1800)

Discussions of the painting typically focus on two aspects imposing themselves on the viewer on first glance, as I can confirm:
the strong composition with contrasts of colours and the presence of Berthe Morisot.

The composition balances different forces:

Like Breakfast in the Atelier (see Post 18 and 19), the viewer is somewhat disoriented by the divergent gazes of the figures directed out of the painting and almost tearing the picture apart.

This is what Lüthy (2003) called the “situative incoherence”; the figures seem to be in no transparent relationship to each other and not involved in some common activity.

But the painting displays a clear geometrical order with a triangle of three figures framed by the intrusive green colour of the railing and the shades on either side cutting out an almost square “picture in the picture” in the upper half.

This strict order might have motivated Magritte to place four coffins on the balcony:

Figure 2: Manet The Balcony (1868) and René Magritte The Balcony (1950)

Although, the “gazes” and “bodies” of Magritte’s coffins seem to form a rather social group turning toward each other. Magritte apparently suggests that Manet’s figures are even more isolated than coffins.
Actually, the coffins remind me of the group in Luncheon on the Grass – perhaps another hint by Magritte?

Concerning the composition, Sandblad (1954) proposes a strong influence of Japanese woodcuts creating a “decorative unity” of the elements. In the previous year 1867, Japanese art was presented to the French public in the World Exhibition, and Manet was surely motivated to compete with this style which he admired, and which was consonant with his own ambitions.

But, obviously, Goya and the Spanish tradition also inspired the painting.
And, typical for Manet, we find allusions to own paintings, especially, with the boy in the dark background reminding of previous appearances of his son Leon (interestingly, at a much younger age in the painting than in Breakfast of the same year).

Most striking is the way Manet has placed the figures in the foreground, almost before the picture space. The figures literally sit or stand “out on the balcony”. We don’t see the anchoring of the railing in the floor, the figures float in space, and the black background further pushes the figures toward the viewer.

In Goya’s painting this effect is not so pronounced, because the railing is moored to the floor and the woman’s foot is resting on a beam fixing the railing.

Additionally, the three figures are highlighted by colourful accessories: a red fan, a green umbrella and a blue tie which stand out much more in the original than in any reproduction I have seen.

In this confrontation of the viewer, the painting reminds of modern advertisement strategies. Viewers at the time were not so used to this “pushing” design. As Dombrowski (2010) suggests, Manet might quite deliberately have chosen this composition to make the painting stand out, in case it would end up in an unfavourable place high up on the exhibition wall.

The presence of Berthe Morisot is the other striking feature.

Her gaze is responsible for “the deep secret behind this picture – the beauty and intensity of life itself” (Georges Bataille 1955, p.85).

The Balcony was the first of a series of paintings and sketches Manet made of Berthe Morisot over the next six years until she married his brother Eugène in 1974.

In Figure 3, we see her famous portrait by Manet (1872) and the detail of a portrait by Marcello (1975). (Marcello was actually the pseudonym of Adèle d’Affry, an acclaimed female sculptor and painter and friend of Morisot, who chose a male artist name to be accepted in the male art community. Today, you can admire her sculptures in the Museum D’Orsay next to works by Manet and Morisot. Pino Balsone made me aware of this portrait – thank you!)

Figure 3:
Manet Berthe Morisot (1872) and Adèle d´’Affry (1875) Portrait of Berthe Morisot (detail)

Morisot was a founding member of the impressionist movement and an artist in her own right, but in books about Manet she features especially as his muse, model, and – possibly – lover.
Art historians are still not sure whether the two had an affair or not, but I agree with Beth Archer Brombert (1991) that this is really irrelevant.

What we know is that the two were loving friends and – looking at the two portraits – we understand why Manet would love her and feel that she looks lovingly back.

In view of MyManet, two things are more important:
that Morisot influenced Manet (more than he influenced her) to try a more impressionistic style of painting, and that this apparently had an impact on his pursuing Manet’s scheme.
Until December 1874 – her marriage with his brother – she was Manet’s favourite model; in 1875 he made his last impressionistic painting (The Laundry). During this period, Manet produced a great variety of paintings including non-impressionistic works, but nothing clearly following MyManet.
Why?

Afterwards he painted Parisian life (trying to suppress his feelings for Berthe Morisot?). The painting of a demi-monde woman – Nana (1977) modelled by an actress – was the next painting following more readily Manet’s scheme.
(There are two other famous paintings – The Railway (1873) and Argentuille (1874) – one featuring as model Victorine Meurent (!) and the other an unknown “loose” woman – which show elements of the scheme; we look at them later.)

To understand what happened in view of MyManet, let us take a closer look at The Balcony.

In a first step, we recognize Manet’s strategy to choose an example from the art tradition, in this case, Goya Majas on a Balcony (Figure 1).
Comparing these figures with his group in The Balcony, we see that Manet again rearranges the gazes and positions. In Goya, the women lean toward each other forming a couple with one woman looking down into the street, the other gazing upward and somewhere out of the picture. Behind them we identify two men “looking from the back”.

Figure 4: Manet’s Scheme applied to The Balcony

comparing with Breakfast in the Atelier

In The Balcony (Figure 4), we find a triad – like in Luncheon – only that now the woman to the right is looking at the viewer (First), the man is looking upward and out of the picture (Third), and the woman to the left, Berthe Morisot, directs her gaze to the left out of the picture into the street.

In view of Manet’s scheme, we would expect her to take the position of the integrating person (Second) looking at the others. However, Manet has placed her on frontstage (and to the left) where she cannot make eye contact with the other two.
Comparing the Breakfast in the Atelier with The Balcony (Figure 4), we see that Manet tries a variation by moving the Second (the smoker in Breakfast) up front and moving the Third (the boy) in the middle ground. The effect is that now all gazes are oriented in different directions out of the picture.
This creates a great tension which is then tamed and contained by the geometrical order of the railing, the shades, and the black square.
To complete the scheme in The Balcony, the boy is looking as the “Other” from the back, although the dark background makes him almost invisible (easier to see in the original than in most reproductions). The flowerpot and the dog stand in for the “still life” (Lemon) in the foreground.

There are now (at least) two different interpretations on what is happening here:

One interpretation, for instance by Dombrowski (2010), argues that the underlying theme is the dynamic between private and public sphere.

The figures are stepping out into the public sphere – on the balcony – and keep their private sphere literally in the dark – the room behind them. They step out to participate, but they also protect their private life.

The relationship between individual privacy and influences of the public market and state was ardently debated at the time, as Dombrowski shows. Visualizing the precarious situation between private and public spheres by floating the figures in a semi-public space on a balcony might, in fact, have motivated Manet who was politically very engaged if not active.

The theme of the public sphere, especially the marketplace out there in the street, was introduced into Manet’s scheme already in connection with the different types of gazes (Post 16: Manet and Emotions). Berthe Morisot is clearly fascinated by some public event in the street.
I will come back to this interpretation in the next post.

Another interpretation keeps the focus on the relation of Manet and Morisot.

As indicated in Figure 3, there is a strong attraction between Manet, the painter, and Morisot, the model. (Brombert is seeing a small smile on Morisot’s face reminding us of the knowing smile of the model Victorine in the Luncheon.)

Manet is placing Morisot on frontstage for very personal reasons, and, tellingly, he paints the faces of the other two persons less defined. (Fanny Clauss, modelling the other woman, apparently was somewhat irritated by that.) He even turns Morisot’s face a little more toward the front – toward him – as would be afforded by the scheme.

Manet is interested in Morisot not only as a painter who indifferently organizes elements of composition in pictorial space, as Georges Bataille points out. Or in his words: he is not only composing the “underlying unity of insignificant things” (p.91). Manet realizes already in this first encounter with Berthe that he is looking not only at an object of his gaze as a painter, but at a person he desires and values; and he is looking at a subject that is gazing back as a person who is attracted to him.
Or in the words of Nancy Locke (2001, p.154)):
Manet sees “Berthe’s gaze as an artist rather than an object”, and as a “distinctive subjectival presence”. So, in the portraits of Berthe in the following years:

“Manet explored the very nature of subjecthood, of what might constitute ‘self’ and ‘other’.”

We see in the portrait of Morisot by another female artist (Figure 3) that Morisot is claiming in her gaze to be recognized as a person – and not only as a woman by an attractive male painter.

The problem is that this loving interaction between painter and model does not fair well with applying a formal scheme to the object of painting.
Locke cites Sartre: “By the mere appearance of the Other, I am put in the position of passing judgement on myself as on an object, for it is as an object that I appear to the Other” (p.171).
In Manet’s scheme the Other is already included as the alternative view (“Other”) on the object of painting and as a reflective view on himself positioning him as painter in the art tradition (“Big Other”). Now Manet becomes aware that the object looking back as a subject on him as a subject adds another level or depth to his understanding of self and other.
Berthe’s view is not just like any other view, it is a view privileged by their mutual recognition as persons with an own identity to be respected and reflected in the painting.
Painting his view of her requires a reflection of her view of him.
Painting with sincerity means not to arrange “insignificant things” (Bataille) anymore, but to do justice to a very significant relationship with implications for the conception of the painter’s own self.

Locke identifies the problem specifically between Manet and Morisot and explicitly not with Victorine Meurent. But we encountered already a similar problem in Olympia.
In that case, MyManet assumed that the strong gaze of Olympia – insisting on her dignity – was partly enforced by the attitude of the model Victorine opposing her perception as a prostitute.
As a counterweight, Manet introduced the black cat.
On the level of design, this saved the balance of the picture and realized Manet’s scheme;
on the level of content, the expressive cat served to unsettle the viewer making him or her aware of the underlying dynamics between painter and model, painted figures and viewer.

Thus, the depth of reflection can be integrated into Manet’s scheme and handled with painterly means. But the complexity of the painter-model relationship certainly increases the complexity of any solution aspiring to sincerity.
In The Balcony, the problem is demonstrated by the strong geometrical frame taming the tensions and by the reaction of the other model, Fanny Clauss, who did not appreciate her role in the painting.

It seems – to avoid the issue – Manet decided to paint Morisot without the scheme in a series of portraits, to explore seeing the world through her impressionist eyes without her in the picture, and – looking at her looking back – to develop a “feminine gaze” (Locke) on other women and himself.

Besides, he chose other topics outside the scheme (portraits, still lives, sea views, landscapes) waiting for the occasion to apply his scheme again.
And we should not forget that in 1870/71 France was at war with Germany – but more on that in the next post.
After Morisot’s marriage, the issue was solved – at least, their relationship was recast in an entirely different set of social norms which prevented Morisot from modelling for him – and Manet started another phase in his painting.

I promised to return to the first interpretation, the theme of private versus public sphere in The Balcony.
For this purpose, we will take a closer look at the most political painting among Manet’s major works, The Execution of Emperor Maximilian of Mexico (1867). It is – like Olympia – not a clear case for Manet’s scheme, but it demonstrates how Manet confronts the problem of power in his work.

And Yes! Visiting the Museum D’Orsay I certainly also saw the Luncheon on the Grass again!!!

See you in two weeks again!

Explorations of Edouard Manet's paintings with diagrams

Category: Edouard Manet Page 1 of 3

The “Absent“ in Manet’s Painting (P29)

Manet’s Theatre: Painting “On Stage” (P28)

Manet and the Male Gaze (P27)

A Bar at the Folies-Bergère – Manet’s Scheme in the Mirror (26)

Manet and the Mirror – A Bar at the Folies-Bergère (P25)

On Paintings, Diagrams and Exhibitions (P22)

Manet and Political Power (P21)

On Manet’s Balcony (20)