S1: please remember that there's another field trip coming up this Sunday if you'd like to go you could sign up with Larry Henderson by the end of the week. also um, in the, coming events category Morna Simpson is going to be speaking at the University Museum of Art tomorrow night. and she's a contemporary um, photography conceptual artist who's now moving into video, and is very articulate and interesting. so, since we've been spending all term on dead artists here's a chance to hear a living one. <SU-F LAUGH> and her presentation i think is at seven thirty_ is there a question? 
S2: yeah where does the bus meet for the field trip? 
S1: oh the bus leaves from right outside the Museum of Art on State Street Sunday. [S2: okay ] <P :06> okay we ended the class last time talking about Courbet's painting The Real Allegory. and we talked about that paradox how could you have a real, allegory. and we talked about Courbet, in the category of realism and this is an ism that, really was used by artists at the time (we've) discussed Courbet issuing a realist manifesto, um at the time, of his exhibition in eighteen fifty-five. now we discussed Courbet as v- being very self-conscious about what he was doing with art self-consciously a modern artist. um setting himself up, against the past in many ways. he's rejecting artistic institutions he's challenging artistic institutions by exhibiting outside the salon system. he's creating a persona around himself, of the artist as outsider the artist as revolutionary the artist as radical, the artist as somewhat bohemian but the artist also aligned with movements of liberation and with the working class. when he talks about real, it means on several levels at once. he talks about the need to draw his subject matter from real things that's the most obvious. you know he's not going to paint an angel if he hasn't seen one he's going to base his subject matter, on things in his own world that he could have seen. not ancient history, not literature, real means not ideal he's not going to romanticize mythologize glamorize um, real also means not imaginary. his art isn't going to be about fantasies, it's not going to appeal to the imagination it's supposed to be about the here and now. moreover for Courbet, real tends to be drawn from lower social classes. there's no reason why poor people are supposed to be more real, um than the artist's own friends, or, you could make you know supposedly people who buy art are real too. but at this time in the eighteen thirties and forties, um, he's working with an idea that contemporary middle-class and upper-class society is false, and that the real, the real people are the working people. so is there other ways, um that realism signifies_ realism means art without illusions. okay and now we're getting into some tricky territory, because the real allegory as we discussed, you know wasn't based on anything he could have seen exactly. an allegorical figure is supposed to be a figure that stands for an ideal. now we've seen how he deflates the idea of an allegory making the real allegory in this painting by taking the figure of a nude and saying no she doesn't stand for truth or beauty, if she's in this painting it must be because she's an artist's model and here you get a bunch of discarded clothing on the floor. usually when you have, you know nymph and shepherd and- shepherd in a landscape or, naked figure of truth you don't get truth's underwear, there in front of you. alright and so this is one way he makes an allegorical figure real and yet this is paradoxical because if she really is an artist's model which is one way that you would see a nude in a contemporary nineteenth century Parisian context. if she is an artist's model why isn't he painting her? um he's making a painting of a landscape here. so these are more ways he's bringing paradox into this work suggesting that it's not exactly a realist picture but nor is it an allegorical one. it's his version of a modern real allegory fit for the nineteenth century. <P :08> but there's another way that Courbet's art can be described as real also, and that has to do with his painting technique and that's why i've brought along the Burial at Ornans from eighteen forty-nine on the left and a close-up of it on the right. and you'll recall some of the comments that people made at the time about how Courbet applied his paint about his technique for painting. um he was criticized for not having any of the conventional technique. people thought he was inept people thought he was crude people thought he painted like a child, or that the paintings looked like folk woodcuts or that they looked unskilled. um they complained that they_ that the paintings didn't seem to use the conventional skills of perspective the perspective is all out of whack here. um and that the paint itself is kind of slopped onto the canvas with these heavy dark art- outlines, without the kind of careful brushwork or um gradual modulation of colors that was supported in academic technique. um what this painting does though Courbet might not have articulated it at the time, but what it does is to make no attempt to create an illusion in art. you don't_ you may be looking at real life but you don't have that sensation, that you're merely looking through a window, onto the real world. the paint gets in the way. you become very conscious that this is a piece of cloth with some kind of sticky substance smeared onto it and that somebody made it. um, centuries of technique had been developed to make the artist seem to disappear, that had been one of the, aspects of virtuosity Vermeer had aspired to that Van Eyck before him had dazzled people with these paintings where you couldn't see the brushwork where it was such a perfect likeness a perfect illusion. and in fact the skill of the artist then became in creating a perfect illusion. Courbet makes it impossible to maintain any sense of illusion when you're in front of one of his canvases, um because it's not about imitation of nature. instead the artist is inserting himself, and inserting the fact that art is a made thing. now this wouldn't be the first time that we find art that's self-conscious. modern artists didn't invent the idea that art is not a natural thing. um but Courbet, was doing it with his hands. and the idea that he introduces, in works like this um that the viewer is never allowed to forget that a canvas is a square you know that a painting is a canvas a canvas is a square piece of cloth stretched over, wood with paint put onto it. <LOUD BACKGROUND NOISE> at the end of that illusion, becomes an idea that modern artists are going to continue to work with and still are working with, today. <P :05> as i said with Courbet that carried um, political meaning sometimes people would look like_ look at a painting like his Stone Breakers up on the screen and say that Courbet could even trowel the paint on as if he were, a workman laying mortar br- b- bricklayer laying mortar. but later generations of critics have looked at this and said perhaps this is a real allegory perhaps this is supposed to remind you of a painter, using a tool to work a substance here. <STUDENT CLOSES DOOR> thanks <P :04> so that's part of Courbet's act of confrontation not only to challenge the art establishment but to challenge the idea, that paintings erase the maker of them. and in some ways that might be what makes, his paintings real. <P :08> now today's lecture is about a slightly later period in Paris, eighteen sixties seventies eighties and the artist we'll be focusing on is Edward Mon- Manet. by next week you're gonna know the difference between Monet and Manet and you'll never make that mistake again. but i wanna situate Manet in the problematic that we've been discussing all week which is the re- the nineteenth century's awareness of its relationship to both past and present. this is certainly something that Courbet grappled with, and Manet like Courbet is very concerned with real life. i've brought back Saint Pancras Station to remind you um in a quick way of some of the, paradoxes that nineteenth century people lived with and thought about. the paradox of living in a period that sees unprecedented technological progress like the trains coming in and out of Saint Pancras Station, like the technology that makes possible the stee- the construction of the shed behind the building, but also an era that's very much concerned with writing histories with its own place in history, with studying history and studying the passage of time. a period when by Manet's era in Paris people think the only thing constant about the nineteenth century is that change is always happening. the very landscapes that, one remembers from one's childhood have been destroyed um the city is in constant renovation. we can see past and present colliding in Paris in buildings like this one, um the Opera, built between eighteen sixty-one and eighteen seventy-five. this was the grand central public opera house in Paris. on the exterior, it's a sort of jumble of classical styles and elements it doesn't copy any one particular building from the past. but you can recognize a lot of the architectural features repeating arches now that comes off the Coliseum it comes off of, Renaissance palaces, columns, in pairs you can recognize Corinthian columns here. um, a big entablature across the top, crowning an important building with a dome. um all of these are, elements of classical architecture that are being recombined by nineteenth century architects. and we've talked about some of the associations this would have carried it would have looked very big and important and of- official, um a part of the government but also connected with learning and culture. yet if you were to look inside the Paris Opera and this is, an imaginary slice through it going this way. um you'll see that it had to accommodate an incredible range of functions much more elaborate than any temple or palace in the past would have done. um here was, the auditorium these were the balconies, the stage had elaborate scrims a whole system for changing the sets all this done on mechanized pulleys, there were green rooms in the back for the actors to prepare and rehearse, there was a grand lobby in the in the front of the building a lot of ceremonial space where fashionable Parisians, could come and gather and show off to each other. a lot of very modern functions and technology within this building that makes so many references to architecture from the past. <P :09> so we can think about Courbet entering into this, this battle between the past and the present this effort to make a contemporary art of his own time. Courbet in eighteen forty-nine would have been in direct opposition to paintings like the one on the right. the one on the right was exhibited at the salon in eighteen forty-seven, it's called the Romans of the Decadence. um the artist Thomas Courture was a leading teacher at the Academy he also took on private pupils he was considered one of the most distinguished artists in France. um yet at the same time we begin to see_ this is a scene from antiquity, from ancient history um the decline and fall of the Roman Empire. and yet we're no longer getting the clear example of moral virtue that had been shown in classicizing painting. so already you know the the the antique ideals are starting to crumble. there's a moral lesson here alright this is telling you what the pitfalls of civilization are it's suggesting that no matter how advanced a culture is, um i- if you believe in the cyclical theory of history it's going to, um become corrupt and then fall. Courture is an interesting transitional figure also because as a teacher, he shaped a generation of artists including Manet Manet studied with Courture. um so as a teacher he was able to pass on some new ideas about art that didn't have to do, with the classicizing of the past. now in Courbet's confrontation with artistic traditions then, Courbet's effort to be a modern artist Courbet's effort to be an artist of his own time, what does he do? he abandons the classical past for focus on the real on scenes in the present. he abandons um the fine technique of academic artists for something that looks crude, <SLIDE DISPLAYED INCORRECTLY> oh <LAUGH> that's not supposed to happen. let's move ahead. he abandons um, the idea that pictures of peasants are supposed to be pleasing. alright? now, by mid-century at the salon exhibitions, one could see, images of contemporary life but it was of a certain kind (Champleton) was okay in showing peasant life as long as they were upbeat pictures. um pictures that showed there was a purpose to the labor that goes on there, pictures that were finely crafted, pictures that made you think that everything was okay in French society. Courbet's art challenges that by making disturbing art. and finally Courbet's art challenges um aesthetic ideals at the time by taking unusual sources. no longer simply imitating art from museums or imitating art from the classical past but imitating things like cheap folk woodcuts and making deliberate references stylistically to the stiff figures um, and schematic organization of low sources of art... Manet is working with a lot of these revolutionary ideas that Courbet had brought forward. the art_ the artist who makes art that challenges artistic traditions. art that's of it's own time, but we're going to see that he does it in an urban context with a new idea of the modern, one that you read about today in the essay by Baudelaire The Painter of Modern Life. now Baudelaire in the essay The Painter of Modern Life, is very interested in this new phenomenon of what we call modernity. and that term is on your, on your handout for today. modernity meaning a state of being in modern times where everything is new. and this is how people felt in Paris in the eighteen fifties sixties seventies, that everything was changing and that Paris, was at the forefront of change. uh for Baudelaire modernity happens in cities. cities are modern modernity is something urban. modernity is about fashion and you see the topics that Baudelaire writes about, fashion the dandy women's makeup, um, people getting in and out of carriages. the idea of fashion and novelty a culture that values things that are new and fashion, is beautiful because it goes out of fashion too it changes it's always new. you don't dress the same way season after season after season fashion is always trying to keep up. now this was a whole different attitude toward the past, that had_ he thought had obtained before it's one that values constant change. uh people in Paris celebrated the mode- their modernity. um and one of the people who did that was the photographer Nadar. now on the screen is one of Nadar's aerial views of Paris, um photography was a new medium in the nineteenth century, it's invented in the eighteen thirties and by Nadar's time not only is it possible to make photographs it's possible to make photographs with a negative that you print onto a piece of paper, and that means you can have multiple copies of photographs. that's how we know it now_ the first photographs were unique they were made on a glass plate, and it was a singular object that somebody treasured almost the way they would an oil painting. but by Nadar's time photography is, getting to be a mass medium. um people are collecting photographs people are buying photographs, Nadar's studio not only makes portraits on commission for people but, um sells, mass reproduced photographs like this one and Parisians are buying views of Paris. that's one way this is modern it's a photograph it's of the city, um but if we read the caption, we see that Nadar is advertising himself he- and he's advertising this picture, Photografie Aerostatique he made this from up in a balloon. so the very viewpoint onto Paris is one that's only available thanks to modern technological devices, of hot air balloons and cameras. um and then he says this this shot was taken from an altitude of five hundred twenty meters and he very proudly dates it. a sense that he's making history. on the right a cartoon of Nadar by his friend Daumier that's making fun of Nadar's technical prowess as well as his self-advertising the, slogan under it would have been Nadar elevating photography to new heights. so you get the pun about going up in a balloon but you also see that Nadar um up here in his hot air balloon has a big billboard for himself on the side of the basket. and when you look down at Paris Paris seems to be have been taken over with photographers' studios and all the photographers are advertising themselves, on the sides of buildings. <P :05> over the course of the period we're looking at today from the eighteen fifties through the eighteen seventies, the very street-scape of Paris changes and this is part of what contributed to th- to people's sense that, time wasn't standing still in Paris in the nineteenth century. um there was a s- big urban renewal projects over a period of decades, um it was technically under the name of slum clearance they were supposed to be tearing down unsanitary parts of the city. um, and then instead putting in, wide new boulevards, like the one we see here lined with buildings in a uniform style, buildings that contain shops and apartment houses, um the street-scape was changing it was becoming much more a uniform s- narrow alleys that people had considered very quaint were being done away with. again there were supposed to be sanitary reasons for doing this but there were political reasons as well. because under um, the uprisings that had happened in the eighteen thirties and then again in eighteen forty-eight and that would happen again in eighteen seventy-one during the moment of the Paris commune um, it was evident that popular uprisings were happening and that people were barricading the narrow streets in their street warfare against royal troops. um the government didn't want to see that happening anymore and so part of the effort to widen the streets was to make the city easier to police, um and to make it more difficult for small revolutionary gr- groups to challenge the government. the tr- changing street-scape of Paris reinforced the idea that people were living in unprecedented and modern times. um and this this change became even more dramatic when gas lighting came in. now nighttime um was no longer the end of the day. nighttime became, a whole new arena for social activity and people once again thought that as with the train stations man-made technology was conquering nature um so that the sun, was now um a mere adjunct to the lighting that people could make artificially. <P :06> Nadar modern person makes photographs of modern heroes. um, he made a series of photographs of leading literary people of the day, and then he would sell reproductions of these photos you could go to Nadar's studio to see an exhibition of his work, um and if you admired the leading intellectuals you could buy copies of their photographs. George Sand on the left a thoroughly modern woman author um she wrote under a male pseudonym, but Nadar, photographed her in very contemporary costume. on the right his photograph of Baudelaire. um the one who did so much to articulate what this modern sensibility would be. now the medium of photography was very startling to people in the nineteenth century and some of these same ideas about technology and art suddenly you could click a button, and all of this detail of somebody's hair, which had taken artists years of training and labor to reproduce_ think about the hair in the painting by the Van Eyck. all of this would now be made mechanically people wondered if this was image making without a soul to it. they marveled at the idea that an image could be made all at once, um without human intervention. photography was considered a very modern medium and one that would become the recorder of, of modern life... (okay let's go back) <P :04> and here's Nadar's portrait of his friend Edouard Manet, which will serve to introduce Manet. you can see Manet was um a very well dressed fellow from great personal wealth. and in many ways, he is like the figure that Baudelaire wrote about the figure of the flaneur. um and you read in The Painting of Modern Life Baudelaire talks about_ let's go back to Baudelaire. he talks about these new characters in nineteenth century Paris fashionable women, um sports as a new trend, Baudelaire talked about the painter of modern life as an illustrator. um he liked that idea newspapers were a very modern idea. um the idea not only that here's cheap print available to many people but that it happens it comes along everyday meaning that a day later it's old, and nobody wants old news. right? news is news and that's part of that sped up pace that novelty that Baudelaire is so intrigued with. so when Baudelaire hypothesizes who would the painter of modern life be he proposes this artist monsieur_ who he calls monsieur G um, or Constantin Guys they think was the model for this character an illustrator for the popular newspapers in Paris. at this time um there wasn't yet the technology to print p- um, photographs in newspapers to do it very quickly everyday, so, cheap news was illustrated with handmade drawings. um that were then reproduced very quickly. but now that we have the distance of time um to look at Baudelaire and to look at the art of his world. it's been proposed that in many ways Edouard Manet was the painter of modern life, in mid-nineteenth century Paris. um he was friendly with Baudelaire, but as we're going to see today Manet's dialogue with modernity, did not exclude a very complicated dialogue with the past. (okay) that's why we should think of him as part of the same overall context that sees revival architecture. Manet, very aware of making contemporary art but showing its contemporaneity by the way that it both engages the past and differentiates itself from art of the past. Manet for one thing an artist who was very well versed in the history of art who really made it a point to study art history. um which as we've seen was a very nineteenth century thing to do. in the nineteenth century it's possible to take courses in art history, it's possible to buy books about art history it's possible to visit the great museums that are presenting comprehensive collections of the history of art. art students are able to buy and study photographic reproductions of great works of art. um but they also spend a lot of time going to museums and copying. and the picture on the right dates from Manet's student days i think you recognize what he was copying, this was from, probably a trip he took to Italy. um he, was able to afford to travel and any nineteenth century art student dreamed of going to travel, not just to see the antiquities on the grand tour but to visit the great art museums of Europe. um he's here he's learning by copying great artists from the past which is what a dutiful art student should have done. <P :04> but when Manet finally starts um sending his own pictures to salon exhibitions, the relationship with the past is much more tricky. uh the work on the left is the Dejeuner sur l'Herbe um Luncheon on the Grass or the Picnic, from eighteen sixty-three, this was accepted into the salon exhibition of that year but it outraged people. and we're going to keep hearing this story we've heard it with Courbet we hearing it with Manet we're gonna hear it more and more for the rest of the class. the artist who shocks people. um that's part of the position of the modern artist that Manet's willing to stake out. now it shocked them on many levels, um, people who knew art history, could recognize some of the references here and if they were very learned, they might recognize this connection here. on the right is a print made in the sixteen hundreds it's a reproductive engraving after a painting by Raphael. um and learned art scholars would not_ would know not just about Raphael's painting but about the Italian engraver who made the copy. and they might have recognized that down here in the corner is a group of three people a river god and a couple a nymph and somebody else, um whose poses look very familiar don't they. we've got one figure with a beard leaning back on one elbow with his legs spread out. we've got a female figure with her elbow to her knee turning around and looking out at us. that's what we've got here. and we've got a third figure whose torso is kind of leaning back in this case he's looking out toward us too. now taking a pose from another artist that's a venerable tradition we've seen that Renaissance artists did it with ancient art, and High Renaissance artists did it with Renaissance art in that search for variety of poses they were always, taking poses out of other compositions and then maybe twisting them or turning them or altering them a little bit. um this was quite a respectable thing to do. what's troubling about it here well for one thing the setting is changed so much um, that we no longer have river gods. that's not why we have nudes here instead we've got a naked lady, juxtaposed uh with two well dressed men a very contemporary Parisian scene. now, even that wouldn't be so bad there there were distinguished art historical precedents for, naked women or, women without clothes having lunch with men in clothes. there was this whole tradition of pastoral painting. um and here's Giorgionne's, Pastoral Concert we've looked at before_ Venetian art from, the fifteen hundreds. by Manet's time this was considered great art it was written about in all the art history books people went to museums to see paintings by Giorgionne. there was nothing scandalous about this. um and Manet's painting makes reference to this kind of art but at the same time that it's invoking the past it's denying the past it's asserting the presentness. think about the differences, um in these imaginary Arcadian scenes nudity is natural. they're set some time in the distant past. this is set very deliberately in the here and now. again we have discarded clothes in the foreground. we're not asked about the social standing of these people these are supposed to be allegorical nymph-types of people. for a woman to be naked with a couple of men in suits well very well, these_ very likely these could be art students bohemian types, who are out with prostitutes for an outing. this wasn't something that was respectable to do at all... now we can compare Manet's collision to past and present, with what was going on with revival architecture to see how different it was. um on the left, the Houses of Parliament in London and they make a deliberate reference to an older building. they make a deliberate reference to Westminster Abbey and we've seen that the architects in the eighteen forties, deliberately copied the tower from Westminster Abbey. but the attitude toward the past in this case is one of great reverence. they're thinking about associationalism the architects are, they're trying to send a message about the past to the present, the example of the great English building is supposed to send a moral lesson to people in England in the present, so it's about carrying on traditions. Manet's use of past art... is much more ironic, it's much more challenging. um because it's it's in some ways an homage to the great artists of the past but it's also deliberately telling you what_ that you can't go back. um and it's almost twinning them, it's almost showing them a sacrilegious, setting to turn what had been great high art of pastoral themes into an assignation between a couple of bohemian students and some prostitutes. okay moreover Manet while evoking, showing you that he knows his old masters he knows his art history, he's painting with a technique that people thought was denying all of art history. because while Giorgionne was admired and written about for his beautiful technique for paintings that looked like poetry. um the paint application that looks like it's glowing. and if some of you get to see Titian's in- at the D-I-A, you know either last weekend or this weekend you'll you'll see more, what people loved about Venetian painting in the nineteenth century. Manet's giving you a very thick painting technique, um but things are slapped on very broadly so he isn't giving you that delicate modeling of form. people criticized what looked like harsh lighting here um and dark shadows, you didn't get that sensitive transition, of light on flesh um and up here in the figure's face again it looked like he was slapping on the paint much as Courbet had been accused of doing. <P :05> nobody could deny_ well some people said here was someone who didn't know how to paint most people could see that Co- Manet was doing pretty incredible things with paint. if you look at the still life here. um but it just didn't jive with their notions of what great art was supposed to be. here's an intricate still life and it's made out of discarded clothes and a spilled picnic basket. right and it, further reinforces the contemporary nature of what's happening here. this isn't timeless beauty, and that's part of that nineteenth century idea he's asserting the timeliness of the present by colliding it with the past. another thing that made this painting challenging was its own reference to degraded forms of art. there were places where you could find pictures of students and prostitutes out for an outing in the wood. you could look at, cheap prints like this one and these were quasi-pornographic prints that circulated these were like the urban version of the folk woodcuts. and this was considered a rather sleazy kind of art but when people looked at Manet's subject they said he is doing an oil painting in a salon exhibition filled with distinguished art historical references he's taking up a subject matter that's only suitable to these cheap throwaway kinds of prints. so that's another modern challenge it was something that Courbet had started to do and that Manet continues to do. <P :04> um at that same exhibition Manet also showed the work on the left the Olympia. um which also messed with past and present, um to make an art about modernity one that was very disturbing. people once again caught the reference and i think you can see it too. if they knew their art history as good art lovers should they'd see that this painting had a lot in common with Titian's Venus of Urbino. um the pose the reclining nude is very similar, the setting she's on, white drapery here white sheets over some kind of red couch and that seems to be what we have here too. um she's holding something in her hand she's holding something in her hand. there are flowers, there's a bouquet of flowers there's a bouquet of flowers. there are servants off to the side there's a servant over here. there's a pet at the foot of the bed there's a pet here_ it's hard to see but you can see the claws and tail of a black cat, sitting at the foot of the bed. um the figure wears pearl earrings the figure wears pearl earrings. she looks out at us she looks out at us. she's wearing a bracelet she's wearing a bracelet. her hand is between her legs her hand is between her legs but with, rather a difference there. so people caught the references all at once but uh, they could also see the incredible differences here. um, because while this was set in the past and there was some legend around it thinking that this could have been a courtesan at court a kep- a very well kept woman. um when people read that title Olympia which to us makes you think Olympus Olympics it must be classical. um, whores of a certain class_ oh good this this, lecture's being recorded for um, an index of academic language so now this goes into the record that academics talk about whores. um, <LAUGH> but that's part of the scholarship you have to do when you're studying nineteenth century French art. whores of a certain class and people were very aware of the distinctions among different levels of paid prostitution. um used very fancy working names like Olympia. um and so that would have tipped people off right away that this isn't just any nude at anytime or anyplace. now we've talked about the press, being such a force in the nineteenth century French art world. um when this went on view in the salon it received more than fifty bad reviews in the French newspapers. because there were more than fifty French newspapers publishing at that time. um and that's how we get a sense of how people responded to it. and we can try to read between the lines in these reviews to figure out why it struck such a chord. nobody mentioned the word prostitution instead they conflated we got descriptions of this is a disgusting picture of a disgusting women. or this is a dirty picture of a dirty woman and they complained that she had dirty feet that her body looked like it hadn't been washed. um, that the the painting was unpleasant that the artist, um that word dirty sale in French was used to apply to the paint to the work of art to the artist and to the subject. why should we be forced to look at this unpleasant and dirty woman the critics asked. um what was- what wasn't being said was that it represented um a social fact that people didn't want to confront and especially didn't want to confront it, in an art exhibition because there was an idea that art should take you away, from the sleazy things of this world. to Manet the painter of modern life the people who think like him this is modernity. um and art doesn't take you away it puts you right into what's new and unpleasant about contemporary life. once again um there was a precedent for the subject matter in cheap popular prints. this is one from the eighteen thirties, he may not have looked at this directly but this is the kind of thing it would have reminded people of. you know picture of a woman with a contemporary hairdo, lying naked looking right out at you. it reminded people too much of quasi-pornographic prints not suitable for the medium of oil painting. it's not that the nudity bothered people uh because here's a painting that was very well received at the salon, by an artist by Cabanel and it shows Venus on the waves. um as long as there are cherubs up here saying that this is about classical times and Greek mythology, full frontal nudity is perfectly fine. um as long as the artist uses a beautiful technique that makes flesh pearly and makes water, look like it's opalescent and makes hair look soft and lovely um people thought this was okay it took it out of the present. Olympia confronts you in the present... the servant figure would have been another suggestion, um that this is modern Paris and that if you're going to find a nude in modern Paris it's going to be in circumstances, that aren't socially acceptable... well let's go back. um the bouquet itself, would have said a lot to people at the time um because it comes wrapped in paper you see she's holding up a bouquet wrapped in paper, that suggests that it was bought at a florist's and that's how you see nature in modern city you go shopping for it. um and who would have bought the bouquet you know how is this set up? the bouquet could have come from one of Olympia's customers, um who's either thanking her or seeking an appointment. where does that put us as the imaginary viewers? we could be the next customer, as Olympia's looking out at us. this is rather an uncomfortable position to be in. the cartoonists picked up on this and exaggerated it. as you'll see they they thought the bouquet was a very important part of the picture and instead of having it wrapped in white paper um they made it wrapped in an old newspaper. um that makes the picture even more contemporary but also even more cheesy. um this cartoonist moved the black cat right up to the front here. um there were a lot of puns about black cats, being um full of sexual in- innuendo they were considered kind of decadent images and so that's one thing. um the artist has also exaggerated in a very racist way the features of the servant woman he, he obviously thought that this was something unnatural and strange and worth commenting on. um and then the depiction of Olympia picks up again on the technique Manet can't paint. he puts a heavy black outline around everything good painters shouldn't do it. people compared this to a signboard or a shop sign. um and that, i- that shows the commercial that was coming through. art wasn't supposed to be about commerce and money art was supposed to be about truth and beauty um but Olympia confounds all of that. <P :04> furthermore people couldn't quite articulate it, uh but they hated the expression on her face. this really troubled them because it isn't that coy glance, um that Titian's Ver- Venus of Urbino gives us as she flirts with us. um and it's not the way (Bruegel uh) at the time, painted, um peasant women the Venus on the waves that we looked at has her face still a- averted, um which makes it easier there's nothing embarrassing about looking at her. this Venus is_ th- this um Olympia is staring right out at us, suggesting that we're in the room. um that we might be the prostitute's next costumer. and moreoven more off moreover, she's not particularly pleased about that. this isn't a picture that tries to seduce us in any way it's not that mysterious glance of the Mona Lisa. instead it's an expression of boredom. um and in this- Baudelaire would have argued that boredom is a very modern state if you're always seeking novelty in modern times then the worst thing that can happen is to be bored. um and Manet is an artist who captures that expression again and again <P :04> we can see it in this painting on the left the Bar of the Folies Bergere. and you think about these titles i've given you we've looked at, um a picture of, people having a picnic outdoors we've looked at a picture of a prostitute now we're looking at a picture of a bar. these are all subjects that just wouldn't have occurred, um to Raphael. right these are modern times modern subjects, subjects drawn from the commercial life of Paris. a city, and the city is the place where modernity happens, a city where you buy things where amusement is now something you go out and purchase. the Folies Bergere, was a new kind of nightclub, that was on the scene in the eighteen eighties in Paris and so Manet as a modern painter is gonna go where the new fashions are happening. um it was a place were a particular kind of class mixing was going on. um commercial entertainment like this is available to new classes of people in cities people who work during the day, and have money to spend and want to go out at night. now this is very different from rural life where you work on the farm from sunup to sundown and your your calendar your clock is determined, by nature determined by the seasons. um when you're working for pay either in the store or at the factory your hours are measured by a time clock by a mechanical device, and nightlife is possible because of mechanical lighting. Manet is giving us the effect here of gaslights in a place of popular amusement. um the Folies Bergere was a combination bar and theater, where huge crowds of people would go, to buy drinks at the bar that we see here and watch a stage show. so this is a new kind of sight it hadn't existed fifty years earlier and that's were Manet chooses to, set his painting. on the right is a cartoon from a magazine from about the time and it's another case where Manet is taking subject matter, that had only been depicted, in the popular press and up till this time it wasn't subject matter that people looked for in oil paintings. so he's elevating he's taking a cheap illustration and making it the subject for fine art. are we missing the slide on the right? yeah we're missing the slide on the right. but we can look at this one in the meantime. the picture is full of paradoxes. once we've established the basic facts that we're at the Folies Bergere and that this is a very contemporary scene, that it's the kind of thing that was being treated in popular illustration Manet then goes out of his way, to stress to us that this painting is unreal. he fills it full of facts that we can recognize, and yet he also fills it full of artistic tricks that make it impossible to see this as any kind of window on the world. um and as we look at it now we're going to see some of the paradoxes some of the strangeness that Manet painted into it. take for example, this cluster of bottles, that's down here in the foreground. now for one thing we can notice this i don't know if any of you recognize this label it's still used on bottles of Bass Ale. so Manet as a modern painter is going to put brand names, right up in front of this painting. that's modernity, branding. it's something that changes_ slogans advertising that's something he wants to capture. um but then he's going to give us a very intricate still life and you can see he doesn't shy away from very challenging technical aspects of painting. there seems to be a mirror, somewhere in this painting. if you try to make sense of it and you look at this silvery area back here. um or you look back at this part of the painting it seems that some of what we're looking at may be a reflection. um that seems to be what's going on here too that this is a face reflected in a mirror that's back here. and in fact scholarly types have gone looked at original floor plans of the Folies Bergere gone to the building as it exists today, this is how you research paintings of modern times you can actually look to actual places. and they're tried to figure out where the mirrors were in that bar. knowing that there's a mirror at first makes us want to think that these bottles might be mirror reflections of the one that's in front. but that doesn't work. it doesn't work because the mirror seems to be behind this woman here and yet she's behind the bottles. so it doesn't line up there's really not much way you can make three-dimensional sense out of this painting... again if you look at the figures over here at first glance this could look like a mirrored reflection of her back, um and if that were the case then this person she's talking to, which if this were, if this were in conventional perspective somebody behind would be smaller and yet this head seems to be bigger. so you can imagine maybe this is somebody standing over here talking to her and then we see the back of it reflected in the mirror here. but that doesn't quite work either the hairdo doesn't sup- seem to be exactly the same, um and the perspective is out of whack. now if we look at an earlier version that Manet painted_ and this is a small study he made while he was working on the composition you can see that the painting wasn't originally quite as complicated as this. um originally it seems to have been much more clear that this woman is in front of a mirror and that that's her reflection it lines up much more neatly, um the things in the foreground stay in the foreground and the things in the background stay in the background. between turning this small oil sketch like that, into the full scale painting you see on the left Manet worked very hard to introduce pictorial paradox and in doing so to remind us, as Courbet would have said that a painting is a made thing. it doesn't disappear it's not natural, it's something that an artist constructs. um and we can see some of that unnaturalness in odd little details like this one back here, legs cut off at the edge. now even putting in an edge reminds us that we're not at the Folies Bergere ourselves. um there are no edges at the Folies Bergere but in a painting a painting ends a painting is a square surface covered with paint. um little tricks like that, remind us about the unnaturalness of this painting at the same time sending another message about modernity the idea that things happen so quickly in modernity that we live in a perpetual state of not ever being sure of exactly what we see. um Manet's painting technique is thus a painting of modern life on several levels, by giving us modern subjects by giving us a modern way of viewing where everything is unstable um but also reminding us in modern times that there are no more illusions, um that art is an artificial thing, um as artificial as a women's makeup as the sorts of, scenes of modern life that Baudelaire wrote about so eloquently. that's it for today.
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