Tag: realism

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, Baudelaire, and Realistic Formalism (P 11)

By Richard Pieper

On June 4, 2021

In Edouard Manet

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Figure 3: A diagram of Manet’s studio

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

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

See you next week!

Manet’s Realism (P 10)

By Richard Pieper

On May 28, 2021

In Edouard Manet

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But what about Manet?

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

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

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

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

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

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

So, see you next week!

Explorations of Edouard Manet's paintings with diagrams

Tag: realism

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

Manet, Baudelaire, and Realistic Formalism (P 11)

Manet’s Realism (P 10)