Explorations of Edouard Manet's paintings with diagrams

Tag: Mirror Image

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

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)

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…)

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