Manet unfurled

"Cafe at the Folies Bergere" Manet

I was driving to San Luis Obispo for the Plein Air Festival and half-way there I had some sort of epiphany , I just couldn't get the painting "Cafe at the Folies Bergere" off my head.
Ok, there might be an explanation. Last weekend I went to see Manet's paintings at the Norton Simon Museum  in Pasadena. I also had just finished reading the book I mentioned in my previous post: "The Judgment of Paris"... so I guess Eduard Manet was at  the back of my head "somehow".
By the way, if you live close by, do yourself a favor and go to the Norton Simon where you'll find  a few  choice paintings by Manet,  like  "The Ragpicker", a clear homage to Diego Velazquez in it starkness.
But back to the point,   I'll admit I always considered poor syphilitic Eduard kind of  an over-rated  painter.  Never mind that the Impressionists thought of him as a trailblazer. A case of the tide raising all boats I thought.

The Ragpicker by Manet

"Menipo" by Velazquez

Not today. I like the "Cafe at the Folie Bergere" piece well enough: The orange hair of the maid echoing the fruit bowl, the black  of the silhouette complemented by the lace and colors of the bottles in the bar , the soft almost sad expression  of the figure, the balanced triangular composition...
This is a nice painting.

It is also  Manet's last painting. He died shortly after finishing it. Would Manet have wanted to "leave" something behind, an artistic testament of sorts?
Well, It is unlikely that he would have chosen this painting in particular to do that. As a matter of fact, his "Olympia" was probably more of a statement than this melancholy maid in a bar. But, to me, this one painting  acquires a more transcendental meaning when I realize how much effort Manet devoted to go beyond the beautiful shapes and colors and give us a "truth". It is impressive how much study Manet had devoted to soak up the sources of great art, specially Velazquez and Titian,  to translate them into images for the eyes of his contemporaries. In a way, Manet was more himself by imitating his idols and imitating them at every turn.



The maid looks beautiful but real nevertheless. Her arms are not artificially slender; her pose is not that of a classic goddess, she has weight and could be any waitress in any bar.  Unlike most other paintings by Manet where his subjects have a certain vacant expression,  this red-head  does have a soul: a sad, may be bored, may be slightly amused but direct gaze. The mirror in the back reminds the viewer of Velazquez's mirror use, be it in the Meninas or in his "Reclining Venus", a device to break the space represented. The brush stroke is loose and expressive, also a Velazquez trademark. It's obvious application is  unable to conceal it's material nature, its truth. It's almost almost sloppy.

Detail of "las Meninas" (mirror) by Velazquez.

I am touched by this life-long effort. Here is a painter who made his mission to paint the truthful world using the best masters he could find as a guide. That some of his paintings are beautiful is almost besides the point as the canvas surface is just the entry point to what boils beneath. His work was undoubtedly triggered by beauty, wherever it might reside, not fetched but found,  much in the same way what we call the "divine" is inherent to what's human.  I am happy I took a second look at Manet. Whether I imagine some of these things or not,  I think his intentions were clear, Manet painted the world he lived in very much like Velazquez or Titian did. To use art as truth, it has to hurt a bit but what's the point otherwise?

"Infanta Margarita" Velazquez

The Judgment of Paris, a review

The Judgement of Paris, The Revolutionary Decade that gave the world impressionism by Ross King

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


The Paris Salon was the ultimate tribunal where French Art was judged during the 1800's. Thousands of artists submitted paintings, sculptures and other forms of art every year in hopes of being accepted.Being chosen or not could break or make an artists' career quite literally. Over the decades, the tribunal that selected the works had become a self-perpetuating institution with sclerotized ideas of what constituted Art- both in regards to content ( mostly mythological, classical or historical grand scenes with some sort of moral) and style (no trace of brush strokes and soft chiaroscuro transitions).

In 1863, driven by the outrage that resulted from the rules imposed by the Count of Nieuekerke and which resulted in controversial refusals, Napoleon III ordered the opening of the Salon des Refuses: an exhibition that was to display many of the works refused by the official Salon. Napoleon III knew how to distract the population from his dictatorial government after all.

This book follows the fortunes of two painters that were deeply involved in the Salon controversy: Meissionier, a very succesful painter of excruciating detail and accuracy; and Manet, a representative of a more direct and modern style.
In a very accessible style that flows quite well, the book delves into the state of French Art of the nineteenth century. The panorama that emerges is a lot more nuanced than what we normally understand by the rivalry between impressionism and classicism, the mere confrontation between the "new" and the "old" which ends in 1874 with the Impressionists Exhibition. The author reveals that Manet, for example, used very classical models (Titian, Tintoretto) for his first paintings. Also, Manet valued the Salon and kept presenting his paintings to be juried year after year, even after becoming the hero of many an impressionist. Meissioner on the other hand struggled to create a modern vision as well despite the fact that his enormous success stemmed from his anachronistic and greatly detailed canvases of a somewhat dutch inspiration.

The cast of characters that surrounds these two masters is the subject of much literature: Courbet, Baudelaire, Whistler, Monet, Zola, Fantin-laTour, Ingres, Degas, Bougereau and the "pompier" painters, an endless row of royals, politcians, gallerists and collectors. "The Judgment of Paris" does a phenomenal job of integrating all these pieces in a coherent narrative.

I particularly enjoyed the glimpses into the lives of the painters, how young some of them were when they created some of their work, how poor or rich or inbetween some were, how they debated with their own place in time and art, how some died young and how some fought, escaped or resisted the Franco_Prussian war, the siege of Paris and The Commune. I thought it was fascinating and far form the "finished" product and narrow portrait of self-determination most biographers produce.

For anybody interested in art and history, the book is well documented and seamless. Not just a collection of facts in search of a story but a good narration.If you are a painter, this is a must read and the only thing you will regret is the time you won't be painting waiting to put it down.



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