Tag: social space

Seeing Being Seen (P24)

On January 15, 2022

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Seeing being seen (Figure 1 lower left)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Let us take a look at this masterpiece!

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

Hope to see you well in two weeks!

Manet’s Scheme: Composition in Social Space (P9)

By Richard Pieper

On May 17, 2021

In Edouard Manet

Two essential features of composition in Manet’s scheme – in MyManet – are the figures’ gazes and the setting of the puppet theatre, or:
the relation between the social space of gazes and gestures and the material space of the setting on stage.
Manet made deliberate choices on both features when he created Luncheon on the Grass.
This we understand better looking at two studies for the Luncheon
and the X-ray visualizing Manet’s first draft underlying the final version.

In Figure 1, the four versions are compared, scaled to the same size, and supported by diagrams indicating perspectives:

Figure 1: Comparison of four versions of the Luncheon on the Grass

A – the final version of Luncheon on the Grass 1863
B – a later copy made by Manet himself dated between 1864-68
C – a study in watercolour with pen and ink dated between 1863-65
D – a print from an X-ray of the final version revealing a first draft

All four versions are presented and discussed by Juliet Wilson-Bareau (1986, p. 37ff)
– including a comparison with the painting Pastoral Concert by Titian and the etching by Raimondi after Raphael’s Judgment of Paris (see previous Post 8). Her X-ray analysis is a much acclaimed and quoted source in the discussion.

Wilson-Bareau proposes that the study (C) was made from the final version, and that the copy (B) was probably made even later. She concedes, however, that the sequence is only hypothetical since the exact dating is unresolved.

Her analysis demonstrates convincingly how Manet was experimenting with elements and their composition directly on the canvas and even at a late stage (like inserting and deleting a little dog to the left of the nude).
She concludes:
“One of Manet’s major problems with the Luncheon was evidently his difficulty in integrating the very solid, sculptural group into the original open and airy setting” (p. 39; title adapted as Luncheon).

In view of MyManet, I suggest a slightly different sequence and interpretation of his “problems”.

Two major changes are occurring between the draft in the X-ray (D) and the final version (A):

– On the left side,
in the X-ray an open view reaches from the foreground to the open landscape beyond the river,
with grass and bushes in the foreground instead of the clothing of the nude in the final version.

– In the group,
the gaze and position of the head of the man next to the nude is changed;
in the final version, he looks slightly upward into some undefined distance
rather than connecting with the other man as in the X-ray,
while his head – in relation to the nude’s face – is a little moved upward and forward in (A)
placing the three faces almost onto the same plane in the picture space.

Looking at the final version, the X-ray, and the study C, it is remarkable that all three versions show the same “solid, sculptural group”. This is indicated by the identical white triangles connecting the faces and by the position of the background female in the diagram of perspectives.
“Sculptural” may not be the appropriate term, since the triad is rather “flat” with the second woman set backward and too large in perspective. But I agree that the impression is rather “solid”; the formation of the four figures appears to be the same and clearly predetermined in all three versions, and rather independent from the landscape in the X-ray.

Taking up the first change:
Manet may have seen a “problem” with the integration into the landscape, but he resolves this “problem” in a rather unusual way by enhancing the difference between the landscape on left side and the solid group!

He introduces the “split horizon” from Pastoral Concert (the two perspectives in the diagram) and accentuates the vertical divide (left red line) by dark bushes and trees above the nude’s head.
Then, he keeps the “too large” woman pushing the background forward and the horizon upward and promotes the artificiality on the centre and right side – the “stage”.
He paints the background rather indistinct as “coulisse” and fits the triad into a middle ground with reduced depth. To maintain the balance under these conditions, he introduces in the foreground the elaborate “still life” to the left and a dominant dark tree to the right.
All this makes sense, when he is determined to preserve the formation of the group though violating a “natural” perspective. He is not caring about integrating the group “into the original open and airy setting” (see Wilson-Bareau above).
Manet invents a programmatic scheme.

Taking up the second change, the gaze of the man next to the nude:
This change raises the question of the role and dating of the study (C).
Wilson-Bareau suggests that the study is made after the fact, after completion of the final version. Her argument appears to be that the study reflects too closely the original to precede it.
Placed before the X-ray, the differences of the study with the X-ray become incomprehensible.
Placed between X-ray and final version, Wilson-Bareau apparently would expect more resemblance with the X-ray.
But why would Manet do that kind of study after the fact?
Certainly not to prepare the later version (B) which is in many ways different again, as I will show below.

An alternative interpretation is suggested in MyManet.

First, it is telling that the left side of the painting is not explicated in the study. This side includes in the final version the attractive “still life”. Why would this be neglected in the – admittedly, unfinished – study?
Second, it seems that Manet wanted to clarify the formation of the group before changing the left side:

The crucial change from the X-ray appears to be the face and head of the man next to the nude!

For the direction of this gaze Manet has no example in either Pastoral Concert or Judgement of Paris. He has to decide where the man should look, and he is not satisfied with an internal communicating gaze to the other male or with an “absorbed” gaze within the triad – as in the X-ray.
If Judgement of Paris is to be the model, then the gaze has to be directed toward the “authority” or Big Other – the god Jupiter arriving from the sky.
Thus seeing the study as an experiment for the gaze of the Third – in terms of MyManet – also underlines the importance that Manet attaches to this gaze!
To my knowledge, only Gisela Hopp (1968, p.23) has declared the gaze of the Third, in connection with the gaze of the nude, a decisive centre of gravity in the design of the painting, although she tries to derive this crucial role only in terms of internal design of areas, colours and perspectives.
(In her words: “Sein Blick ist erst der endgültige Kernpunkt des Bildes, nicht zu lösen von dem der Frau, aber auch für diesen Ausgangs- und Anziehungspunkt.”)
MyManet could not agree more!

It is interesting or puzzling that the nude’s gaze in the study (C) seems to follow the gaze of the man next to her – not gazing to the viewer! This is difficult to understand, if the study is made after the final version, as Wilson-Bareau proposes.
Rather, experimenting with her gaze in conjunction with experimenting with his gaze demonstrates what Manet is attempting: designing the interactive effects of the gazes in constituting a certain social and pictorial space.
When the nude is not looking at the viewer, the interaction with the viewer is lost and the gaze of the man is not effective anymore either, because it loses its singular force.

Finally, we have to consider the later copy (B).

Wilson-Bareau offers a questionable interpretation – from the view of MyManet.
She perceives in the copy “a more coherent, close-knit relationship between the foreground figures, while … improving the perspective view of the bather in the background” (p.39).
In my view, Manet appears to be testing after the fact and after receiving all kinds of harsh criticisms about his “failures”, whether his programmatic scheme is successful in achieving what he wants to achieve.
He revises all the major changes which account for the originality and modernity of Luncheon on the Grass:

The perspective is “improved” by reducing the size of the background woman, setting her lower and lowering the horizon, and creating a more integrated background across the painting breaking the dark vertical above the nude.
The man to the right is moved closer to the other two figures creating more intimacy (see right red line and perspective). He is also positioned a little bit lower and to the front (white triangle), while the other man appears a little smaller following the perspective toward the woman in the back.
Together, these changes produce a less “flat” middle ground extending into the depth of the painting.
The man next to the nude is now modestly looking toward the man to the right – sinking back into insignificance.

The result is a more “natural” setting which might have caused less of a scandal, because viewers could “read” those pastoral scenes – but we certainly would not be talking about this painting as a starting point for modern art!
The dynamics in the composition – the perceived lack of intelligibility, of inconsistencies and ambiguities – aroused the criticism of the art community, but caused also the later recognition of its ingenuity.

No wonder that Manet did not finish or exhibit this version!
Maybe he kept it ready at hand in his studio to show it to anybody worth to be engaged into a discussion about his innovative great scheme in the final version.

To be sure, this scheme is a hypothesis about the concepts guiding Manet. But I think it demonstrates two things:

It is necessary to consider not only the sources inspiring Manet to understand his compositions, especially, since he is substantially changing and adapting them to the needs of the emerging painting.
It is not enough to interpret Manet’s composition as “defined in terms of their rejection of academic conventions” (John House 1986, p. 12). The rejection is a critical attitude certainly shared by Manet, but it does not yet explain the programmatic choices and specific innovations introduced by Manet.

Time to summarize the elements of this scheme in form of a diagram integrating the results so far:

Figure 2: Manet’s Scheme – Composition in Social Space

The diagram should not be understood as a “manual” which Manet is following in the composition of Luncheon on the Grass, or in the creation of any of the other paintings to which we will apply the scheme. The diagram is mediating between the painting itself as experienced by us today and the process of painting as an event happening about 160 years ago. It is a tool for understanding – as are all diagrams – not a “theory” of the painting.

The essential dynamic is the interaction of social and pictorial space, of the roles outside the painting with the roles inside the painting.
Obviously, such a dynamic is – in the strict sense – only meaningful in figurative painting. And not all figurative paintings, and not all of Manet’s figurative paintings, are exemplifying this scheme as developed in Luncheon.
To understand our experience of other types of painting, we will have to introduce new concepts and schemes which appeal to different ways of relating to “What do pictures want?”(Mitchell 2005).

Manet is inspired by the structure of the puppet theatre which provides a model or stage for the activity of painting.
As anybody who has witnessed a puppet performance knows, there is no clearly defined inside and outside in the relation between audience and performance. The relationship is negotiated as the “show goes on” in each performance.
In terms of painting, we should imagine a situated installation artwork with the painting presenting certain elements “performing” on the “stage” carried by the canvas. The essential medium for this “performance” is the way our eyes move through the painting following the network of gazes and gestures of figures in the painting while engaging us and other agents outside the painting. In a sense, the relations are the “spiderweb” that stretches the social and spatial relations “in mid-air” reaching beyond the frame.

As indicated in Figure 2, Manet does not see these relations as realized on the flat surface of the canvas, although he is certainly aware of the material vehicle. He creates his own version of a socio-spatial “reality” which does not follow the rules of perspectives but stages figures and objects in a layered way, similar to a collage.
The “stage” is structured into a picture space rather narrow in depth and delimited by a front plane and a back plane. The front plane defines the foreground and is often accentuated by a “still life”, symbolized in the diagram by the lemon.
The picture space holds the triad of social roles with the First relating to the viewer and the painter, the Second integrating the relations on stage, and the Third linking to the “world beyond”, to society and tradition, symbolized as the Big Other or – in Manet’s case – by his idol of painting Diego Velazquez.

An interesting role in Manet’s scheme is taken by the “Other”. The “Other” reflects Manet’s insight that placing the scene “on stage” – like a puppet theatre performance – implies that there is an alternative perspective “from the back”. This “Other” may be represented within the picture, “painted on the coulisse” as in Luncheon, but the role may be only implied by the way the scene is staged.
As we will see in some interpretations of Manet, this “Other” – besides the relation between Third and Big Other – provides a welcome entrance for psychological or psychoanalytical interpretations looking from an unconscious “deep back stage” (often symbolized by a dark background) or for sociological interpretations emphasizing societal influences.

Similarly, the other external agents may be presented or unrepresented and only invoked by elements in the painting. Manet strongly reminds us of the presence of the painter by the very style of his painting. The viewer is, obviously, engaged by the outward gaze of the First; only on rare occasions does Manet introduce a “represented” viewer. The Big Other is implied by the diversion of the gaze of the Third, which avoids the gaze of the viewer and makes the viewer aware that looking at the painting is not only an individual subjective affair by the viewer – there is a “world beyond”. Finally, we have seen that Manet produces an awareness for the model – in case of Luncheon, by the amused gaze of Victorine Meurent who contacts the painter Manet in the process of painting.

The diagram offers a tool especially for the structural features of Manet’s scheme.
In that sense, it can be understood as representing aspects of the aesthetic form of the painting. However, the scheme is not simply aesthetic, it is incorporating a social form. It reflects how Manet (and, consequently, how the viewer) experiences the social reality and transforms it aesthetically in the painting.
This interaction between social form and aesthetic form, between the social reality of the painter and the development of new ways of seeing and expressing the reality in painting, has been brilliantly described, in the case of impressionism, by Robert Herbert (1988).

Obviously, the diagram does not tell us everything about Manet’s approach to painting.
There is much more to be told about the form and content of Luncheon on the Grass.
The diagram must be placed in a broader context to be meaningful.

Two important themes, we have already identified and postponed:
One theme is about the question how the paradigm of a puppet theatre can be aligned with Manet’s avoidance of “telling stories”. His figures are typically not engaged in clearly identified activities.
Another theme is closely related; it is about Manet’s realism which seems in conflict with the idea of a puppet theatre as well as with the application of an abstract compositional scheme.
Enough stuff for another post!

Meet you next week!

System of Faces and Gazes (P5)

By Richard Pieper

On April 22, 2021

In Edouard Manet

Velazquez has demonstrated for us (in the previous post) that there is a range of different directions the gazes of persons will take – and how these gazes structure the social space within the painting and with “unrepresented” persons outside.
Time to have a more systematic look at these gazes and their meaning.
In some cases, the proper classification may be disputed, but this is not relevant for the following.
Since not all faces or gazes appeared in all three examples and some appeared more than once, we might ask:

Question 3: How many gazes or persons are needed as a minimum?

Or to be more specific:
If the “painting of painting” is the theme, how many and what kind of gazes are needed within the painting to communicate with a certain number and kind of persons assumed outside the painting?
The answer to this question will lead us into some rather theoretical territory – so, I hope for your patience, and hold on tight!
In Figure 1 we find an overview of the faces in the diagrams (see Post 4):

Figure 1: Formal positions and faces in Velazquez’ paintings

Actually, the overview presents not all the cases we might like to distinguish in MyManet:

The triad of persons, which are at the centre of Luncheon on the Grass (Figure 2), is not an obvious element in Velazquez’ examples. The triad comprises a gaze (red) to the viewer (the nude), a gaze (blue) to the members of the group (man to the right), and this strange gaze (purple) directed outside the painting (second man).
All three gazes appear in each example of Velazquez, but not in a specific arrangement and they are combined with other gazes.
In MyManet, I want to identify the members of the triad with specific names and formal positions:

The First
The First is making the essential contact with the viewer outside the painting.
As in The Drinkers, this may be more than one person. But then we may conclude that this is suggested by the theme – the joyful group – rather than needed in a more general scheme.
In The Little Cavaliers, we find also two Firsts (red) in the centre groups engaging the viewer. A third person to the right, looking towards the viewer, may be gazing toward the viewer accidentally, not really trying to engage the viewer.
In other paintings, we will find more of these “accidental Firsts”, especially, in paintings with larger groups. In some cases, the person looking toward the viewer will be so “distant” in the middle- or background that the engaging effect does not arise.
A special case is the viewer entering – as it were – the painting and appearing as a backfigure in the foreground (see Post 3). We might say that engaging the viewer is so effective that the viewer steps into the scene and takes the role of the First. An additional First is not needed to achieve the engagement.
In terms of Fried’s “facingness”, the picture as a whole has attracted full attention.
In a diagram we could depict the backfigure as a First (red) from the back (without eyes or face).
For reasons discussed below, I prefer to show the viewer as backfigure within the painting to keep the role of the First distinct. Manet does not use backfigures in his paintings. (With rare exceptions e.g. in the Masked Ball at the Opera with a Polichinelle from the back appearing on the left side.)

The Second
The Second has the role of creating the social space by looking at the other members of the group.
There may be more than one group, like in The Little Cavaliers, so we expect one of them in each group and social space. In some cases, the Second may be seen from the back (no eyes or face), but then we interpret the position to be “accidentally” turned away from the viewer. The position is not specifically calling for the identification of the viewer to take this position and look at the scene through the eyes of the Second.

The Third
The Third is acknowledging the existence of some external “authority” with his or her gaze.
The Third has a role that is crucial for Manet’s scheme – and it is, I think, one of the reasons why Manet is admiring Velazquez.
The best example, among the three paintings from Velazquez above, is Las Meninas with the Master himself (and some of the other figures) looking at the royal couple entering the scene. As indicated previously, all interpreters agree that the painting is celebrating the royal institution, not just the royal couple. And we should add that the dominant figure of the painter himself also aims to emphasize the importance of painting as a cultural institution, not only Velazquez’ personal success as royal painter.
This reference to an external “authority”, we see also in The Drinkers in the gaze of Bacchus; it is not so obvious in The Little Cavaliers, where the gazes (purple) out of the painting may be “accidental” to persons which just happen to be outside the picture frame.

The triad – First, Second and Third – is an essential element of MyManet, i.e. my view of the hidden meaning in Manet’s compositions.
It is not the only one, as we see shortly. But I like to remind you of the etching of the puppet theatre – shown already in Post 2 – where the triad is prominently on stage. (There is a fourth figure, perhaps Polichinelle subdued by the police officer? And there is the cat, which we meet again later!)
There is a painting by Velazquez focusing on just the triad (and a little monkey!) which is shown next to the Luncheon on the Grass in Figure 2.

Figure 2: The triad in Manet’s Luncheon on the Grass and in Velazquez’ Three Musicians (1618)

We return to this triad when we discuss the Luncheon in more detail.
Here, I want to point out that the triad can be understood in social theory as a basic social unit:
The first-person represents the subjective perspective of the focused individual, the second-person is the partner in a dialog acknowledging the mutual presence and communicating back to the first-person (and perhaps to others), and the third-person is a participant and/or observer depending on the nature of the interaction.
The sociologist Georg Simmel – mentioned before – was the first to analyse systematically the formal position of the “Third” and its different roles (e.g. as mediating referee or as dividing and dominating the others). He demonstrates that it is the triad which essentially constitutes the basic social unit, because it is the triadic relation in which we experience that a social interaction – like a dialogue – can happen without us as first-person!
There is an objective social reality in front of us which does not depend on our subjective view or any specific individual or viewer. Children learn this around the age of three years (Tomasello 2019).

In MyManet, we assume that Manet had at least an intuitive understanding of this social phenomenon.

That is why he chose three persons in the centre moving the fourth to the back. Moreover, Manet saw that this triad had to situate the activity of painting in a social context:

The First engages the viewer/painter, the Second establishes the social reality of the group in front of us, the Third acknowledges the wider institutional context, the society, or the “world” around the painting.

And Manet reflects in his painting on this reality in a distinctly modern way. He keeps a reflective distance putting this reality “on stage” where he can manipulate it as the painter-puppeteer.
We can understand now why Manet avoids the backfigure. Letting the viewer enter the “stage” as a backfigure would destroy this reflective distance and make it difficult to control the level and the kind of engagement between the First and the viewer.
The social and philosophical analysis of this social reality “on stage” is available only a generation after Manet.
But he experienced already the impact of modernity on his own life and his relations to others, and his literary friends (Baudelaire, Zola, Mallarmé) described it in their novels.

The “Other”
Another crucial element is the figure of the “other” (green) representing an outsider view.
The “other” is placed in parenthesis because it is a rather complex figure with many meanings in the literature, and often put into parenthesis in other texts.
Let us try to clarify its roles and meanings:

On a first level,
the “other” plays just a role within the painting. While the Second (blue) creates the social space by looking at other participants from within, the “other” confirms their social space from outside.
All three paintings by Velazquez show these figures. Especially in The Drinkers, we see the central group surrounded by onlookers. In The Little Cavaliers, the “other” is connecting the frontstage with the groups in the middle.
We could treat the “other” figure as a potential Second – like the figure in the back to the right in The Drinkers, who is communicating with the figure within the group and might be joining as the activity evolves.
Similarly, we could speak of the Second as being the “other” for the First and Third. Just consider how Manet – in Luncheon on the Grass – moves the Second to the right side of the painting looking onto the other two!
In a more general usage, the partners of a first-person in social interaction are often referred to as the “others”, no matter how close or distant the relationship.
In MyManet, I prefer to make a clear distinction between the members of a triad (or ingroup forming a social space) and outsiders.
In the case of The Drinkers, the onlooker to the right – presumably a beggar trying to get some coins or a drink – might even be a total stranger to the group. Again, Simmel has taught us to understand the special role of a “stranger”, especially in the context of modern urban life.
On this level, the “other” is characterized by a cultural role:
the individualism of modern urban life makes us partially “strangers” to each other. We must come back to this meaning of the “other”, when discussing Manet as a “painter of modern life”.

On another level,
the “other” is looking from outside of the picture frame, as it were. Discussing Caspar David Friedrich’s Romantic painting, we saw that the viewer might – in a way – enter the painting from the front to the point that the backfigure appears within the painting.
Similarly, a person with a different perspective – say, a critic or the “alter ego” of the painter – may enter the painting from the back and appear in the role of an onlooker.
The “classical case”, as I pointed out, is the person in the background of Velazquez’ Las Meninas!

On yet another level,
the concept of “other” has a background in social philosophy (Sartre, Levinas) or psychoanalysis (Lacan). In this case, we have to consider a “deep structure” of social reality – either in society or in the personality – which confronts the self as the “other” – as a stranger to itself – with effects of alienation.
Some art historians apply this level in their interpretation, but they reach beyond the realism guiding Manet in his paradigm of a puppet theatre. (We will see a “depth” in Manet’s realism when we discuss the role of the “uncanny” in a later post.) The concept of “other” assumed in MyManet looks at painting as a social activity, where the participants and “others” are taking roles either within or around the painting as an installation in an imagined setting. We will say more on “deep structures” discussing other views on Manet.

Again, we should distinguish the role of “accidental other” from the “other” in a special compositional role related to the outside.
In The Little Cavaliers and in The Drinkers, the onlookers (green) support social spaces and the wider setting within the painting. The role and the number of onlookers is determined by the theme of the painting; they help to create unity in the composition.
In Las Meninas, however, the “other” in the background clearly communicates also with the outside of the painting. As I suggested in the previous post, the figure in the door in the background is about to “leave the painting through the coulisse”. He is in a double role: playing a role in the scene and representing an alternative view or perspective on the entire scene, including the space in front of the painting or the audience in terms of the puppet theatre.

A special case, again, is the “unrepresented other”. As we will see later, in some of Manet’s paintings the “other” is not depicted within the painting – as in Luncheon on the Grass – but rather implied and deliberately hidden “behind the coulisse”. The “classical” case is certainly Olympia, a painting he is already working on at the same time.

The Absorbed
Finally, we find figures (yellow) in the paintings who focus on something other than a person within the painting or whose direction of gaze is undetermined. Following Fried, we could say that all persons not directly engaging with the viewer are “absorbed” within the painting. Absorption would be the normal case (with the exception of portraits, where the sitter is typically looking at the viewer/painter). In MyManet, we distinguish more roles within the painting, because Manet uses their gazes to engage with different roles inside and outside.

Again, it is meaningful to distinguish between absorbed persons and “accidentally” absorbed persons.
In some cases, rather isolated persons are part of the theme; in other cases, it might simply be difficult to determine who a person is attending to. But in The Drinkers, the absorbed guy (yellow) in the centre plays an essential role.
In Figure 3, we see two persons absorbed in a book or in their own thoughts. Especially in religious themes, say, a praying monk, it might be more adequate to treat this absorbed figure as a Third, since the figure is obviously “looking beyond the painting”, perhaps with closed eyes as in Figure 4.

Figure 3: On the Beach – Suzanne and Eugene Manet at Berck (1873)

Figure 4: Monk at Prayer (1865)

As indicated in Figure 1 above, the persons in the painting will take their places either in a social space defined by their gazes and gestures or in a wider setting. The picture frame or the “stage” will delimit what part of the implied environment is actually visible.
Beyond this visible environment, we have to imagine the setting or installation of the painting with actors engaged in the experience of the work of art.
In MyManet, we assume that the borders between the setting, the stage or frame, the environment, and the installation of the painting can be quite fluid – just like in the reality of a puppet theatre performance.

So far, we have identified 5 positions within the painting,
although the absorbed persons seem to depend on the specific theme and will be only “additional” elements in a more general scheme.
The next step is to take a closer look at the formal positions populating the environment of the painting.

So, meet you next week!

Manet and the Puppet Theatre (P2)

By Richard Pieper

On March 31, 2021

In Edouard Manet

The model – or at least a source of inspiration – for the way Manet composes his paintings is the puppet theatre or marionette theatre.

That was the thesis presented last week. Today, we take a closer look at the implications of that view.

Most commentators of Manet’s work use at some point the image of a theatre to describe his way of “staging” the scene in the painting. But besides providing a metaphor for the direct relationship which Manet’s tries to establish between the viewer and the painting, the model of the stage is not further employed to characterize his compositional strategies.
MyManet proposes exactly that and – even more specifically – invites you to look at Manet’s paintings through the eyes of children watching a puppet theatre!

Let us consider some of the characteristics of a puppet theatre:

First, the space on stage of a puppet theatre is limited, especially to the front and back. The actors can move to the left and right, even up and down, creating the impression that the world continues beyond the stage on each side. But the actors are restricted in reaching out to the space frontstage where the audience is sitting and in retreating toward the back through the coulisse. The audience is well aware that the space backstage is occupied by the operator moving the puppets, even if they are immersed in the play. And Manet has made a suggestive little etching showing himself in disguise of a puppet peeking through the curtains from the back with some of his favourite requisites littered on the stage. (Note the balloon of My Manet flying by in the picture within the picture!)

Figure 1 Etching, 1861

Figure 2 Luncheon on the Grass, 1863

Looking at Luncheon in the Grass in that perspective, we sense that the three central figures are sitting on a kind of stage (in the studio), and we can almost see the background as a painted coulisse fencing off the backstage. The figures are somewhat crowded together. The man to the right is leaning out to the right, since he has no other direction to move.
Especially telling is the flat green background of the hand in the centre. In fact, this colour sets the tone for the entire painting (and for My Manet).

Manet is playing games with us, though.
He suggests a limited stage space, but he does not employ the obvious strategy to paint a frame, say, with curtains like Vermeer (see previous blog). The tree appears to be on the edge toward frontstage, and puppets could clearly leave the stage to the right. The situation remains “open” to the sides, not boxed in. Then, Manet moves the second woman “painted on the coulisse” forward, she is obviously too large, and, thus, is closing off the background. We cannot readily look past her into a background, she pushes forward and pushes the viewer backward.

But on the left side of the painting, Manet shows a realistic view into the far depth creating an inconsistency for our perception – we have to look back and forth – which further enhances the impression that all is just put on stage.
In support of this perception, Manet emphasizes the front of the stage – to the right by the tree, to the left by a wonderful still life, both not really connected to the central figures. Rather, they reach out frontstage to the viewer.
Violating perspective and the “proper” scale of objects – like the woman in the back – is a charming feature of puppet theatre as Manet’s friend Duranty pointed out – which may well have intrigued Manet (as noted by art historian Michael Fried 1998, p.474).

Thus, the pictorial space is full of “tricks”, but basically, we have a rather narrow space for the “action” and a frontstage and a backstage supporting, but also delimiting the pictorial space.
This feature, we will find again and again in Manet’s paintings, up to the “finale” in his famous “A Bar at the Folies-Bergére” twenty years later.
We return to that.

Now, I like to point out another feature of this “stage”.

We have three actors on this stage, or four, if we count the “virtual” person painted on the coulisse.
From a social point of view that is remarkable, since three is the minimal crew for any decent drama on stage.
One person can hold a captivating monologue, two can have a love affair, but the dynamics depend on the third person introducing alternatives and shifting alliances.
This is a formal aspect characterizing the potential for action.
Typical for Manet, there is no evident on-going action, the protagonists are somehow arrested in their postures for the moment.
They look quite vital and ready to resume whatever they have been doing. But for the moment they pause.

This impression has puzzled many interpreters of Manet, but – in my view – nobody has proposed a convincing interpretation.
Typically, art historians relate the fact that these persons do not communicate or interact in any meaningful way to the situation of modern life isolating or even alienating the individuals. A possible “modern” interpretation, but this does not contribute to any understanding of the composition in pictorial space.
We do have the feeling that something important is going on – the painting is obviously fascinating people for some 160 years – but what are they doing?
It is as if the actors are saying “Look, this is a play with three people. We are distinct persons playing specific roles”.
Unfortunately, we are not told the story line, only their positions. The way they look is obviously important for the whole composition, but their gazes do not create a closed space between them. Their common activity is interrupted, the space of their relationships is “opened”, and the attention of at least two of them is distracted.
The man to the right is kind of sustaining the relations within the picture space with his outstretched arm, but he is interrupting his communication.
On stage, it would be clear what is going on: the actors are attending to the audience and have to interrupt the “story”, they pause to establishing the contact with the people in the audience.

The philosopher of art, Richard Wollheim, proposed a somewhat similar interpretation:
Manet is introducing an “unrepresented” viewer entering the scene. The gaze of the woman establishes the presence of the viewer in a way that makes the viewer aware of himself or herself. This, in turn, motivates the real viewer to search for additional layers of meaning in the painting which this “unrepresented” viewer might see in the painting, but the viewer does not see yet exactly what the painter, Manet, intends to achieve.

Not all painters strive to achieve this specific type of active engagement of the viewer.
Following Wollheim, most of them don’t in most paintings. This also means that Wollheim is here introducing an element, the “unrepresented” viewer, which is not essential for “Painting as an Art” (his book title; 1987) in general.
Therefore, we might question his particular interpretation of Manet without taking a stand toward his general art theory (which would be beyond this blog). What is relevant in our context is that this “unrepresented” viewer is a formal element of composition which is quite independent from any content or “story” that might be going on in the painting.

To some extent, we encounter the viewer we already met looking at Vermeer’s painting, although now not in the corset of a perspective system. But not quite.
Wollheim compares Manet, on the one hand, with Caspar David Friedrich, a German “romantic” painter (1774-1840), and on the other hand, with the early Edgar Degas, his friend and painter (1834-1917). (Degas is famous for his paintings of ballet dancers, but he started his own “revolution” a few years later.)
In Figure 3, we see an example from both artists, although I chose different paintings to enhance the correspondences with Luncheon – and marked a “zoomed” detail in Friedrich.
Figure 3:
Comparing: Caspar David Friedrich – Edouard Manet – Edgar Degas

Looking at the Degas, I agree with Wollheim that the figures in Degas are just lined up to be portrayed.
The girl to the left establishes a contact with the viewer, but the essential content of the painting is not influenced. The relations in this bourgeois family are obviously problematic (look at the mother!), and this is what Degas wanted to present to the viewer.
In Manet’s painting, the figures have much more presence for the viewer, even though not all are looking outward. This involvement we “see” also in Friedrich’s painting. In fact, the entire painting is impressing itself onto the viewer. In this particular case, the viewer even sees him/herself represented within the picture space, because we tend to identify with the figure in the foreground approaching the group in the middle ground.
Friedrich succeeds here in presenting the experience of a represented viewer to the viewer. In other cases, he is attributing the experience of the scene to an “unrepresented” viewer whose intense experience gives the scene its “romantic” flavour, in Wollheim’s interpretation just like in Manet.

In my view, there is a crucial difference.
In Wollheim’s view, the “unrepresented” viewer is, in a way, outside the painting and might be approaching the picture plane until he is actually seen within the painting. This viewer is an integrated element of the perception of the scene, as if looking from within even if not represented inside. Wollheim is not employing some “deep” psychological or psychoanalytical processes (e.g. no Sigmund Freud; we have to return to this kind of interpretation of Manet’s paintings by other authors). Rather, it is our everyday imaginative capacity at work, similar to our dreams “mobilizing our memories of what nightly goes on in our heads” (p.164). No real mystery here, although – like with dreams – the world may appear sometimes mysterious and the space uncanny – like a castle ruin in the moonlight in a painting by Friedrich.
Wollheim assumes for Manet a similar naturalistic or scientific attitude towards our perception and the perception of the – represented or unrepresented – viewer.

But there is a difference.
As noted by Wollheim, the figures in Manet’s painting are disturbed from outside the picture; the distance to the viewer is preserved and with it the autonomy on both sides. Their gazes contribute somehow to the meaning of the painting without invoking some “story” and engaging the experience of the viewer in it! Note that Friedrich’s painting is loaded with symbolism. It is called “The Stages of Life” with people of all generations in a somewhat mystic landscape.
Originally, Manet’s painting had the generic title The Bath with hardly any “story” indicated – just a scene one might encounter around Paris at the time (which contemporary viewers found quite puzzling).

To understand, why I consider this difference important, we go back to the distinction of the space inside the painting and the space outside the painting.
For Manet, there are more persons outside the painting than an “unrepresented” viewer. There is the painter himself, the model, a friend, perhaps a novelist and art critic like Edmond Duranty or Charles Baudelaire (who visited almost daily), and they are all – virtually – sitting in front of the stage in the audience.
And unlike in a normal theatre, with actors on stage and a director and stage crew supporting them, Manet – like the operator in a marionette theatre – had to address each one of them through the figures in the painting.
No wonder the figures look in different directions, they have different roles to play in the communication with the audience outside the painting!

Figure 4
Social positions inside and outside the painting

The viewer is not fixed by perspectives in a certain position or in the privileged position of an “unrepresented” viewer. We are not invited into the perceptual space of the painter/viewer, but rather into a social event.
The viewer is quite autonomous, changing positions, even walking around as a critical observer and checking what is going on “backstage”. (Certainly, children try to go around to see what is back there!) The viewer can, virtually or metaphorically, look from the “back” as indicated in Figure 4. The position can be imagined like the second woman within the painting looking at the group from behind. Or like Manet, peeking through the coulisse – see above. The viewer may even take the position of the model.
Interestingly, Manet painted just this situation a year earlier (1862) portraying Lola de Valence, a Spanish actress and dancer. Manet was kind of “interviewing his model backstage”. On the left side, we see the audience looking at the stage and towards you, the viewer – and past two layers of coulisse – the pictorial space. This position or perspective is the view of the “other” in social space (or the “alter ego” of the painter in psychoanalytical terms).

Figure 5: Edouard Manet, Lola de Valencia (1862)

Besides, the painting is an example of the great interest of Manet in theatre, opera and circus, not only the puppet theatre, documented in paintings over his entire career.

We will return to the position of the “other” in the next post. In a later post, we also have to pick up the way Manet is avoiding any great “story” – unlike Caspar David Friedrich above or his “romantic” precursors and teachers Delacroix and Thomas Couture. He literally starts a “postdramatic” painting which makes us jump right into 20^th century discussions on art and theatre!

For now, I like to emphasize two things:

On the one hand, the puppet theatre provides us – and, I argue, also Manet – with a model for real and virtual spaces inside and outside the painting or the pictorial space. These spaces form an installation inviting us to enter and walk around – much like installations in modern art over a hundred years later!

On the other hand, we realize that the spaces are constituted essentially by gazes and gestures of persons inside and outside the painting and between those inside and those outside. These spaces are social spaces and, therefore, we will take a closer look at how Manet paints the communication between the persons involved in the painting process.
Again, the model of the puppet theatre will prove to be helpful!

See you next week!

Painting the Activity of Painting (P1)

By Richard Pieper

On March 24, 2021

In Edouard Manet

Contemplating in 1863 about Luncheon on the Grass, Manet might have asked himself:

How can I paint the activity of painting in a modern way?

This is the first question I posed in the “Installation My Manet” introducing the ideas behind my collage shown at the exhibition of the Järvenpää Art Society. (You will find the collage here. )

The collage was originally planned as a more elaborate installation occupying a whole corner of the room and inviting the viewer to step into a puppet theatre or marionette theatre. The figures of Luncheon in the Grass would hang from the ceiling onto a stage framed by curtains and backed by a coulisse with the second woman and the landscape. The painter (Manet in the costume of Vermeer) was to sit in front on a bench with the viewer as another spectator next to him. The “real viewer” approaching the installation would be invited to sit next to them (or at least, stand close to them). The puppet theatre would look somewhat like in the etchings of Alfred Legros at the time – a painter and friend of Manet – who looks himself invitingly at the viewer of the etching.

In the installation, the model would be peeking from the left side of the stage; Velazquez would drift somewhere on the upper right side flying in a balloon with Jupiter painted on it, hanging from the ceiling …
Some background material on the wall would explain what this was about. Additionally, I wanted to discuss the ideas with visitors.

That was the plan.
Then, Corona hit – and the installation was not possible anymore, let alone the discussion.
The gallery was closed.

Then, the Art Society came up with another idea to cope with the pandemic.
Each artist had the opportunity to create a piece of art over the span of one day and the activity was recorded and published on the society’s website. So, our painting of a painting would be documented on video.
Taking part in this event changed My Manet drastically. Now, I had only a day to produce a collage. (Actually, I took more time preparing the installation at home.)
The burden shifted to a presentation of the basic ideas as a text on the wall, and the discussion had to move into virtual space connecting My Manet with Your Manet.

As it turned out, this made me even more aware of what I wanted to do – and what not. Showing the activity of painting in a painting (or video) was – in my view – Manet’s aim.
But he did not want to be in the picture – let alone in a video, I am sure.
More precisely, Manet would have loved the new media and, perhaps, created multi-media installations. But he wanted to let the painting speak for itself about the realities of painting in modern life. Manet never talked or wrote much about his art – he painted!

What was – in my view – Manet’s approach to the problem of presenting the activity of painting without the painter?

I will address this question in two posts.
Still learning how to run a blog, I realized that I have to cut my contributions into digestible chunks.
Here is the first part:

Let us look at an alternative, Johannes Vermeer’s The Art of Painting (1665) (Figure 3).
Note that the painting is about 200 years before Manet, but he admired the Dutch Old Masters.

A problem with Vermeer’s approach is that we hardly see what he is doing.
The painting seems to be unfinished, so we can assume that Vermeer wants to show the process as on-going. But the painter covers up the process. Moreover, Vermeer places the viewer in the space behind the painter, even makes room for the viewer to stand this side of the curtain conveniently drawn aside. Now the “real viewer” in front of the painting is induced imagining the “real painter” behind this imagined viewer as in Figure 4.
Now, this game of “who’s viewing whom or what?” is a lot of fun for art philosophers (we will return to it later), but not so much for Manet, who wants to paint. The “action” is taking place between him, the canvas and the model, not some 1-2 meters behind his back.

One issue is about showing the on-going process on the canvas.
One solution for this issue is for Manet to keep the painting “unfinished”, at least in part. The viewer (sitting next to him, see above) can finish these parts with his or her imagination while looking. The viewer might not even be aware of this active role.
Manet offers a painting “open” for interpretation, not a “final” product. Such strategies, keeping the viewer active, we will encounter again and again. But now, I want to look at the way Manet treats this space occupied by the painting, the painter, the model, and the viewer.

Actually, there are two spaces: one inside the painting and one outside or around the painting.
Both spaces are treated by Manet in a new and innovative way, which – in my view – is not adequately attributed to him in the literature. He is recognized as “revolutionary” in many ways, but there are still secrets to discover. His strategies are not new anymore, we learned from him, but he is not given due credit.
At least partly, this is a consequence of treating Manet as a precursor of impressionism. But Manet never was or wanted to be an impressionist, in fact, he never exhibited together with his impressionist friends, although they urged him to. Impressionists – roughly speaking – focused on the play of light on the surface of objects or landscapes.
Manet never abandoned the materiality and 3-dimensionality of his subjects or his space.

First, let’s look at the space inside the painting.
Most interpretations of Manet emphasize at some point that he is “flattening” the picture space and even his subjects; typically, this is seen as one of his “revolutions” which initiated modern art as we know it. Modern painting, so the story goes, accepts and starts with the fact that there is a 2-dimensional, blank, white canvas waiting for the marks of the painter. In my view and experience – this white surface is, actually, a horror stifling any creativity – especially, in its modern perfect fabrication. One sits in front of it and any search for “handles” to hang on your imaginary ideas are absent, and the hanging of them is frustrated. To make any mark on the surface, to splash any colour on it to get the inspiration running is better than this flat white.
The artists living in caves thousands of years ago had it easier, in a sense, the rocky wall suggested all kinds of marks. As soon as there is anything on the surface, we tend to see a “space”. The mark “stands out”, the colour creates “depth”. Then, we start to paint in this space and change it – even when we want to experiment with making it “disappear” or appear “flat”.

I think, Manet never worried about “flattening” things to a surface (of the objects and/or the canvas).
He wanted to escape the confines of the conventional approach asking you to create a “window” through which one would look onto real or imagined worlds structured by more or less perfect perspectives.
From Manet’s realistic point of view, it is even questionable to stick to a system of perspective, since we don’t see in “real life” the world in strict perspective.
This can be observed in Vermeer’s painting. He applied a perfect perspective – and the painting appears somewhat artificial and constructed exactly because of that. If violating the perspective meant creating “flatness” in the painting – so what?
Steps toward “flatness” look especially desirable from hindsight – from the point of view of abstract art.

Manet was trying something else.
He wanted to put the painting “on stage”, to create a pictorial space similar to a puppet theatre or marionette theatre. The model for this approach was readily available. His friend Edmond Duranty, a young novelist and critic, revitalized the tradition of marionette theatre at the time creating a public theatre in the Tuileries garden. Manet and his painter friend Alfred Legros, who depicted the theatre as shown above, were actively engaged in this venture. The art historian Michael Fried (1998) has described this engagement as a source of motifs in Manet’s paintings. But Fried does not exploit this model for the understanding of Manet’s pictorial space.

In the next post, we will take a closer look at the influence of the puppet theatre on Manet’s organization of the pictorial space inside the painting and the implied view of the setting outside of it.

Meet you next week!