Tag: Gustave Courbet

The Emergence of the Scheme (P7)

On May 6, 2021

Manet’s scheme – the MyManet scheme – did not emerge in one creative step, but over several paintings experimenting with figures, their gazes, and their roles.
As we have seen, the scheme implies at least three figures and their gazes within the painting. Therefore, we look especially at his multi-figure paintings, and try to find elements of the emerging scheme:

Question 5: How can Velazquez – figures within – and Courbet – figures outside – be combined in a social scheme?

According to Michael Fried, the years 1862-63 saw the breakthrough of Manet’s art (1996, p.1).
After copying The Little Cavaliers (1859) and before he created The Luncheon on the Grass (1863) and Olympia (1863), Manet painted four scenes with three or more figures (excluding graphical works and sketches):

Music in the Tuileries (1862), Spanish Ballet (1862), The Old Musician (1862), and The Fishing (1863).
In Figure 1, the four paintings are shown together.

Figure 1: Four multi-figure paintings preceding the Luncheon on the Grass

Music in the Tuileries

Spanish Ballet

The Fishing

The Old Musician

What I find striking is that these painting are so different!
Would anybody (without some acquaintance with Manet) guess that they are even from the same artist?

As Fried demonstrates in detail, this is at least in part due to Manet’s attempt to integrate very different sources from past Old Masters.
In Spanish Ballet and The Old Musician, the reference to Valezquez and Spanish art is obvious.
In The Fishing, we find references to the French tradition (e.g. Watteau) but also to Rubens.
Music in the Tuileries seems to pick up The Little Cavaliers, and – assuming (wrongly) that the original was from Velazquez and that the Master pictured himself at the far left – Manet is putting himself in his place.
But citations go also across these lines e.g. with French masters also appearing in The Old Musician and Spanish influences in Music in the Tuileries.

Actually, Manet kept generations of art historians busy to find the references to past and present art and to identify persons in the painting.

While I find these discussions of sources and influences of different painting traditions very interesting in themselves, these interpretations emphasize the differences between the four paintings. Typically, Manet is described as experimenting with different styles and techniques, and often he is said to be still lacking certain skills.
What is somewhat missing – as far as I dived into the literature – are the common themes or issues guiding Manet’s exploration in these paintings. The theme of combining past and present in each painting is always acknowledged but the common themes cutting across these paintings are reduced to the development of different aspects of his painting style.
Music in the Tuileries receives in this perspective most recognition, since the painting appears to be most “modern” both in subject and in painting technique. The other three examples owe more to the past, it seems.

In Post 3, I pointed out one theme that unites Music in the Tuileries and The Fishing with Luncheon on the Grass, namely, the issue of scale. The paintings are different from Luncheon in their scale of the figures and the social and spatial relations between them, but they have in common an exploration of the effects of scale:
The Old Musician is, in this respect, comparable to the Luncheon: it shows the figures on the level of direct face-to-face interaction.
Music in the Tuileries and Spanish Ballet are like The Little Cavaliers in showing the figures lined up in a middle distance trying to keep contact with each other at least by proximity.
In The Fishing, this contact is broken or rather restricted to relations of body orientation and gestures. The grouping dissolves into a pattern of distributed small groups or individuals.

Manet does not like to paint large groups – like the traditional paintings of historical mass scenes of war or festivities. To connect larger groups in a composition, the painting needs a “story” uniting the figures – Manet avoids telling stories. The number of people produces problems, when you want each individual to play a specific role. It becomes even more of a problem when each person in the painting is assumed to have his or her own “story”. This is especially the case in a group portrait, where we expect that each individual has a distinct personality and a contact to the viewer – as in the typical portrait.

We can see the problem in the Spanish Ballet.
Manet invited the group into the studio to make a group portrait, and we can imagine how he found everybody looking at him. This was not the social situation, he wanted – we can feel the distance he created between the group and himself. As a result, he focused on two couples, dispersed the group, placed some dancers in a darker background, and tried to achieve unity in the composition by spatial rather than social relations – and he never tried to paint a situation like this again!
I do not think that Manet was incompetent to paint large groups or group portraits. He was familiar e.g. with the Dutch tradition of group portraits, and he found innovative solutions whenever he wanted them. But his interest in the direct relationship between the viewer and the action “on stage” is impossible or missing in those situations.
So, Spanish Ballet demonstrated for Manet that his concept of pictorial space – the puppet theatre – is not in alignment with a viewer facing a crowd or a larger group facing the viewer.
This, indirectly, supports the view of MyManet. (It also tends to contradict Fried’s concept of “facingness” of the whole picture as a central aspect of Manet’s art.)

At first glance, Music in the Tuileries is a counter example to the point just made – that Manet does not like crowds. But a closer look shows that Manet emphasizes a series of distinct figures, small groups, and even specific faces lined up from left to right. We see a series of individuals, and many of them have been identified as members of his social circle. The art historian Niels Sandblad (1954) is right, I think, when he draws a close connection with The Little Cavaliers. Most figures in the crowd are not more than an atmospheric background – except a few figures (highlighted by red circles in Figure 1) stand out.

Interestingly, the painting is structured by the trees into three sections.
Only in the left section, perhaps 4-5 figures look towards the viewer, most prominently one of the ladies (First).
She catches our attention and induces us to “read” the painting from left to right – just like in The Little Cavaliers.
The centre breaks this move – by a deceptive perspective deep into the park – but it is puzzling with its diffuseness of figures except for the strangely enhanced gentleman (Second) looking down at a sitting woman and for the “absorbed” children playing at the front edge of the painting (or “stage”).
To the right, again one gentleman (Third) stands out greeting somebody outside the painting lifting his top hat – taken directly from The Little Cavaliers.
Finally, a strangely enlarged gentleman (a reversed “other”) with a grey top hat is looking toward the back.

I have emphasized the references to the diagrams to highlight the “testing” of roles occurring in the painting.
As Sandblad sees it, Manet is distributing a series of “faces” that are “flat, unmodulated areas on the surface” replacing “reality with a kind of sign-language” (p. 63), an element showing an unusual “respect for the pictorial surface … most remarkable in the whole painting” (p.23). Sandblad detects here first traces of symbolism modifying Manet’s realism (distinct from current naturalism or emerging impressionism).
I would agree with him that Manet is presenting here a hidden constructed scheme arranging symbols of faces and gazes. And that this is not to deny that the painting is also the first “modern” painting of leisure activities of the urban bourgeoisie, as many art historians point out (like Herbert 1988).
But Music in the Tuileries can also be seen as testing elements of the scheme. However, the model built on The Little Cavaliers turns out to be an alternative second scheme for the middle range of the scale. We will encounter it again in other paintings (like Masked Ball at the Opera 1873).

Considering The Fishing in this perspective, it shows dispersed groups and individuals with a combination of social relations across spatial distances in a rather free composition. This arrangement should also be regarded as an alternative third scheme for the large distant range of the scale (like View of the World Fair 1867).
As I suggested in a previous post (P3), Manet has, obviously, not only one scheme for his compositions.
But MyManet tries to demonstrate the impact of a specific scheme – realized in Luncheon on the Grass – on other paintings beyond this special case. We will see this influence even in paintings following alternative compositional schemes.

So, let us take a closer look at the remaining fourth picture: The Old Musician.

As Fried tells us, this painting is a perfect starting point for analysing the way Manet is citing and borrowing from other paintings – an El Dorado for art historians. It is also a great example for the way Manet is combining freely – like in a collage – elements for his own purposes. He is not copying.

I have engaged in some own collage making. In Figure 2, I combined The Old Musician with the figures from Courbet’s painting representing the roles outside the painting. Although not exactly, since I mirrored the inner group of three figures, and added some red ellipses and a face diagram to enhance the critical elements.

Figure 2: Combining The Old Musician with Courbet’s roles outside the painting

The diagram fits to the emerging scheme almost perfectly. We see all five roles outside the painting and their corresponding “partners” within:

The triad – First, Second, and Third in the middle (with Second and Third switching positions).
The girl – inspired by the boy? – looking from the left like another “represented” viewer.
The “other” – looking from the back; quite tellingly, he is The Absynth Drinker from Manet’s own painting (1959), thus, Manet is citing himself as the “other”.
The “authority”– the philosopher or the representative of society and tradition is cut off by the right frame.
And we find a little still life marking the front stage.
The “absorbed” figure is eliminated in this case; we have kind of an “absorbed half-figure” represented by the cut-off philosopher.

The experts agree that
“simplification”, “sincerity”, and a “new type of connection with the beholder”,
besides a “resistance to available modes of pictorial understanding” (Fried p.21-23), is characteristic for Manet.
So, Manet, looking at the painting as his own first viewer and critic, might have reached some conclusions:

For simplicity, the girl as a “represented” viewer is not really needed in a generic scheme realizing a new type of connection with the beholder. A painting surely should allow for additional figures, but they may vary with the subject.

In communicating the relationship with the “authority”, the Third has to be credible as connecting to an agent outside the picture space and not e.g. day dreaming. A boy, not even looking at the “philosopher”, may be not convincing and evoking other interpretations e.g. related to his youth or social class.

Placing the “authority” clearly outside the painting (like Velazquez) may be the better solution for the generic scheme. Although, depending on the subject, strong clues for the implication of “authority” may be required (like Velazquez representing the royal couple in the mirror of Las Meninas).

Citing the painter himself as the “other” is a nice ironic touch, but for a generic scheme it will not always work .
The “other” looking from the back should perhaps be less dominant.
Moreover, like in the lithograph with Polichinelle peeking out from the coulisse (Post 2), it might be better to imply the “other” rather than representing the figure in the painting e.g. by moving the background forward and making room for imagining a social space “behind the stage”.

So, in the perspective of a sincere, new scheme presenting the “painting of painting” – including roles inside and outside the painting – we should focus on the essential elements.

Now, Manet needs a subject that allows for the realization of the consolidated scheme, but also for his way of mediating between the past and the present while critically and ironically distancing himself from both.
The nude is clearly the “classical” subject which – transposed into the context of modern life – offers all the possibilities for confronting existing traditions in art and society.
The paradigm of the puppet theatre provides not only a vision for the composition, it clearly feeds into all ironic and critical intentions of the project.

So, the subject will be a Luncheon on the Grass with a female nude accompanied by the three additional figures required by the scheme!

See you next week!

Beyond the Viewer: Who is Looking? (P6)

By Richard Pieper

On April 29, 2021

In Edouard Manet

In the previous post, we distinguished 5 positions inside the painting.
(see Figure 1 in Post 5)
Now, we consider the positions outside the painting:
Who is looking?

Or as the question in Installation My Manet has it:

Question 4: What kind of social roles are involved outside the painting?

For the answer, we turn to Gustave Courbet (1819 – 1877) :

Figure 1: Gustave Courbet The Painter’s Studio – A Real Allegory (1855)
(with red ellipses added)

Unlike Vermeer, who depicted only himself and the model (see Post 1), Courbet shows himself in a crowded studio with all the members of society relevant for his realistic painting – with himself in the centre!

In the centre, the nude model looks over his shoulder – although he is painting not her, but a scene from his home province. Well, a nude is always helpful to get (male) attention, and the nude signals serious painting.
The little boy with the cat is allowed to take a closer look, and seems to admire the artist more than the painting.

To the left, we see members of society – both poor and rich (the sitting man with the dogs may be Napoleon III).

To the right, members of the art community are gathered: friends, writers, artists, art lovers, critics, and financiers (at the right edge, reading a book and not interested: Baudelaire, the realist writer and Manet’s friend).

Notably, only two people – besides the inner (red) circle around Courbet – are really interested in the painting (marked with red ellipses).
To the right, there is a woman looking over her shoulder from behind;
to the left, and at the very edge, we find an old Rabbi or philosopher observing the scene.
The others, presumably, play a role in the allegory of Courbet’s life, but they seem to be present just to support the Grand Ego of the painter.
Thus, if we count only the interested persons, we find 5 positions and social roles outside the painting:

The painter
The painter is clearly shown as independent, creative and skilled to transform ideas with paint into a visual object. There is a personal life depicted leading Courbet from his rural provincial region to the centre of French culture and society.
Painting is shown in a social context, but the context is not really involved in the process. The painter is the centre of the activity.
With Manet, the painter is present and active, but not represented.

The model
In Courbet’s painting, the model has a curiously passive role standing behind the painter, while he is painting his own provincial background.
As we will find, the model has a crucial and active role for Manet. In Luncheon on the Grass, the model has direct eye contact not only with the viewer, but also with Manet, the painter.
Manet preferred models interested in his art (family members, friends, supporters) and artists like his favourite model Victorine Meurent (who not only modelled but painted herself) or his friend and painter Berthe Morisot.
We will return to the relationship of Manet and his models.

The viewer
Courbet clearly takes pride in collecting a large group of viewers around him – he was a great painter, but also a great marketer of his art and engaged in public life. Paintings are created to be seen! And for Courbet, the painting can and should talk to the viewer, even presenting an allegory of a painter’s life.
For Manet, the communication of ideas through painting is a much more subtle thing. The viewer has a role in understanding and interpreting the ideas of a painting, but Manet is not telling the viewer a “story”.
In the reflection on the “painting of painting”, the painter is his own first viewer. Other viewers may be present on a visit to the studio or are an anticipated audience (if only in the museum), but they do not enter the painting.
Still, their viewpoint in front of the painting plays an important role in the composition, and their view, their anticipated reaction, and their role as customers influence the painting process.

The critic or the “other”
Members of the art community, critical evaluators including the artist’s friends, are vital because they provide the examples, role models, and feedback for the painter.
Courbet sought independence in his Realism from traditional Romantic schools early in his career – perhaps, this is why the group of artists and critics in the painting is somewhat distanced to the side. Still, he was well aware of the importance of the art community for his work.
Manet – besides attending for six years the art school of Thomas Couture – also was an integrated member of the art community, although in his own circle. Artists and critics were frequently visiting in his studio and he visited them in return.
While a painter is foremost his own critic, “others” taking a different perspective “from the back” were not only a virtual, but an actual presence in his painting practice. Charles Baudelaire, for instance, is said to have visited Manet almost daily. In later years, Stephane Mallarmé was another friend, art critic, and regular visitor.

The “Authority” or Big Other
Courbet does not include a reference to art traditions or a gaze outside the painting to any authority, he paints himself as the authority.
Manet valued highly the tradition and institution of art, and sought the recognition by the Academy of Fine Arts – eventually to present his art in the Louvre Museum. He initiated a “revolution” in art, but only because he sincerely pursued his own way of painting, not respecting established norms just because they were established. Unlike his Impressionist friends, he always tried to mediate between tradition and innovation.
He never founded an own school but experimented with different styles and built bridges between schools, past and present. The Great Masters – like Diego Velazquez, Antoine Watteau, Titian, and Frans Hals – gave him guidance. But he did not follow them.
Perhaps most telling of his independent orientation toward a more abstract ideal or “authority” of painting is the fact that he never really joined the impressionists, although he kept close contact with their community.
And he never styled himself as a genius transgressing the achievements of his predecessors (like Courbet). But he created his personal style, and art historians to this day have problems with assigning him to any particular “-ism”.
Velasquez was his idol all through his career – that is why I chose to take the Master’s silhouette as an icon for the “authority” in the diagrams.
I also like the term “Big Other” for this external referent, because it eases the connections between the “other” – as a different perspective by others in the social context – and the “Big Other” – as an authoritative value reference in art.
Different Interpreters of Manet’s art invoke different “authorities” (e.g. philosophical, historical, psychoanalytical, political, or even ethical frames of reference) and propose their relevance for understanding his art.
At this point, we just introduce this distinction, and will discuss different interpretations when they become relevant for understanding Manet’s paintings.

Now we can combine the positions or roles in our scheme: (updating the version of Figure 4 in Post 2)

Figure 2: Positions and social roles inside and outside the “painting of painting”

The diagram shows again the painting with its “stage” between front space and back space. The triad takes a prominent role within the painting with the onlooking other (green) and the absorbed other (yellow) playing supportive roles. The gazes of the figures create a social space within and are reaching out to the agents outside the painting. They relate the represented social reality within the painting to an unrepresented social reality outside.

The diagram differs clearly from the scheme for Vermeer, because it distinguishes a plurality of positions beyond the painter, the model, and the unrepresented viewer.
It is also different from Courbet and Velazquez and their depiction of the “painting of painting”, since they represent the painter within the picture.
Courbet, moreover, does not include the First – the direct contact with the viewer – or the Third – the gaze to an authority, unlike Velazquez.
As we have seen in Music in the Tuileries and The Fishing (Post 3) , Manet does include in some cases himself in a painting, but not in a prominent role. He appears as part of the depicted theme: as member of the art community enjoying their time in the park, or: as member of the future family (since The Fishing has been interpreted as a promise and announcement of his marriage with Suzanne, the mother of his son Leon depicted on the other side of the river).

The diagram, obviously, anticipates the composition of Luncheon on the Grass. We just have to drop the absorbed figure from the scheme. This raises the question, whether the scheme is only an abstract model of this specific painting. The thesis of MyManet proposes more, namely,
that the diagram is a generic scheme for other paintings, too, and that

the Luncheon on the Grass should be read as a programmatic statement about the “painting of painting”.

To support this thesis, we will look at a painting that precedes the Luncheon, and which MyManet understands as a first attempt by Manet to combine insights from his study of Velazquez and Courbet (and other paintings) in a programmatic way.
The painting is The Old Musician (1862), created just a year before the Luncheon and considered by many art historians as basic for Manet’s art in the early 1860ies.

See you next week!