Manet's "Olympia"
vietGutenberg
[Rated R - parental advice. Cho anh US cu`ng anh JG. Anh TS (and...) co'
the^? ddo.c ke'...]
Manet's "Olympia"
[masterpiece]
http://www.salon.com/ent/masterpiece/2002/05/13/olympia/story.jpg
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/cultureshock/flashpoints/visualarts/images/olympia.jpg
With a single shocking canvas depicting a prostitute in repose, Édouard
Manet ushered in the brave nude world of modern art.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Mary Elizabeth Williams
May 13, 2002 | She was unlike any naked lady who'd ever gone before. She
wasn't Eve in the Garden or Venus on a foamy bed of waves. She wasn't a
goddess or an angel or a shy bather caught off guard. She was a contemporary
woman -- unabashed, unclad, unmistakably unallegorical. Her name was
Victorine Meurent, but Édouard Manet called her Olympia. And she changed
everything.
On first inspection, one might wonder what all the fuss was about. Manet
considered himself a painter of still life, and perhaps that's why Olympia
has such a quiet mystery about her. She lounges serenely, starkly unclad but
strategically adorned -- a black ribbon around her throat, a single slipper
on her left foot (the right one has dropped carelessly off), a voluptuous
pink flower at her ear. Her hand is firmly clamped over her sex. The outer
corners of her mouth are raised just a fraction, a moment away from a smile
or a sneer. Her eyes are drowsily heavy-lidded but her posture is
unmistakably alert. Compare her to any overheated, dishabille nymph of the
baroque or rococo eras and she seems positively demure.
But there's something different about this female. For one thing, she's
pointedly not doing anything. She ignores the bouquet that her black maid
offers, and the kitten, tail at a highly suggestive full attention, that
peers from the foot of her bed. She isn't bathing or dreaming or dressing.
As we take her in, we realize that she's a woman naked and in bed for
exactly the first reason a woman might be naked in a bed. She's there for
sex, and she regards the viewer with a look that's part invitation, part
dare. She's a mistress, or more likely a prostitute, but she sure as hell
isn't a sprite named Springtime.
Manet was perhaps the world's first shock artist. Every modern provocateur
who slices up a cow or assembles a Lego death camp owes him a debt of
hype-making gratitude, but his influence exceeds his infamy. Well-bred,
elegant and gentlemanly, Manet was as horrified by the response to "Olympia"
as his critics were by the work itself.
He was a painter trained in the staid academic tradition but too exuberant
to be constrained by it. Inspired by the audacious realism of Gustave
Courbet and the otherworldly darkness of Spanish masters like Velázquez and
Goya, the young Manet was inevitably drawn to less conventional themes than
the gentle, drawing-room-ready tableaux of the Salon artists. But just
because his style didn't run toward chubby cherubs didn't mean that Manet
fancied himself an outsider. He maintained that he simply painted what he
saw, and he showed his work because he sought acceptance. What he got was
more vitriol, more fame and more lasting power than he'd ever dreamed.
When "Olympia" was exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1865, it ignited a
scandal over art and decency that has rarely been paralleled. Think Rudy
Giuliani invented outrage? Critics eviscerated the work, and the crowds
almost did the same. Antonin Proust later recalled that "If the canvas of
the Olympia was not destroyed, it is only because of the precautions that
were taken by the administration."
Victorianism wasn't strictly for the British, and no serious artist
dared to
paint a woman of such obvious ill repute without at least draping her in the
exotic garb of harem girl. Yet here was a courtesan glorified in an homage
to Titian's "Venus of Urbino" that was so obvious spectators called it
parody. But it wasn't -- Manet didn't merely expose the prostitute to the
eyes of the world, he had the audacity to worship her. It was blasphemy. How
unfortunate for Manet's detractors that it was also exquisite.
192.41.13.240/artchive/t/titian/titian_venus_of_urbino.jpg
It starts with the woman herself, and the fascinating face of Victorine
Meurent. Meurent was Manet's longtime model, muse and companion, the subject
of numerous canvases. Over the course of more than a decade, Manet invented
her again and again as a boyish bullfighter, a street musician, a gracious
lady in pink robes. In 1863, the same year he wed his wife Suzanne, Manet
did two nudes of Victorine. The first, "Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe," he
exhibited at the Salon des refusés after being rejected by the official
Salon.
http://www.abcgallery.com/M/manet/manet.html
http://www.abcgallery.com/M/manet/manet92.html
http://www.abcgallery.com/M/manet/manet91.html
http://www.abcgallery.com/M/manet/smanet28.jpg
www.ee.princeton.edu/~jay/Nary/dejeuner_manet.html
But the sight of Meurent's naked presence at an otherwise buttoned-up picnic
party proved too alternative even for the alternative crowd, and the work
was thumped as "bizarre" and "risqué." Perhaps chilled by the reaction to
"Le Déjeuner," Manet waited two years to show the other nude. But "Olympia,"
to whom not even an innocent skinny-dipping motivation might be ascribed,
caused an even greater furor. In no other canvas did the collaboration
between Manet and Meurent unleash such fervent response, and in none were
they as hauntingly dazzling.
What upset everybody so much? It may be that she seems so unaffected
herself. She stares placidly at the viewer, putting us in the uneasy
role of
client to an alluring, if bored-looking, whore. Manet inhabited a world in
which it was generally assumed that a woman existed to nurture, comfort,
inspire or arouse, all in relation to her place in society and family. But
Olympia, for all her blatant accessibility, is tantalizingly
self-sufficient. There's nothing supplicating or humble about her. To the
wealthy collectors of art and women, who regarded both as possessions,
Olympia stripped them of their illusions. Her body is ripe for the taking,
but everything else, including the meaning behind that enigmatic
almost-smile, she's keeping for herself.
For all the great paintings in the history of art, few show a woman whose
gaze is so startlingly direct and defiantly unaccommodating. Mona Lisa shyly
glances to her left. So does Vermeer's "Girl with a Pearl Earring."
Botticelli's Venus looks out dreamily into the middle distance, lost in her
own thoughts, while Sargent's Madame X turns her head away completely. And
scores of Virgin Marys glance rapturously up at the angels or tenderly down
at their babes.
When a woman does face front in a painting, it's likely to be a portrait of
a queen, not a canvas of a concubine. Olympia meets us eye to eye. It's an
ingenious and unsettling device, a bit of artist's revenge. The image in the
frame is the one doing the sizing up, and it is we who are left feeling
appraised -- and potentially rejected. The critics, unaccustomed to having
the tables so turned on them, were quick to serve up rejections of their
own. They hated the subject matter. They hated the flat, primitive style.
They hated everything about it.
"What's this yellow-bellied Odalisque, this vile model picked up who knows
where, and who represents Olympia?" demanded one writer. "Inconceivable
vulgarity," declared another, while yet another proclaimed that "art
sunk so
low does not even deserve reproach."
Manet was devastated. "The insults rain down on me like hail," he complained
to his friend, the poet Baudelaire. Yet while many looked upon Olympia
as a
symbol of depravity or a slattern, others recognized her as a triumph. The
writer Émile Zola called it Manet's "masterpiece," declaring, "It will
endure as the characteristic expression of his talent, as the highest mark
of his power ... When other artists correct nature by painting Venus they
lie. Manet asked himself why he should lie. Why not tell the truth?" But the
truth came at a cost.
Though he continued to paint and exhibit for the rest of his life, Manet
remained a frequent target of public disdain, forever misunderstood and
tainted by the scandals of his youth. He hadn't sought to offend; he simply
painted the best way he knew how, in bold strokes and unexpected contrasts.
And he wasn't alone -- his innovative techniques and unconventionally
ordinary choices of subject matter eventually ignited a new generation of
artists. Though he refused to label himself as such, his successors hailed
him as the father of impressionism. He was among the vanguard to glorify not
the figures of myth, but the radiance of absinthe drinkers, suicides and
prostitutes.
In the artist's lifetime Olympia never received her due, but she aged
remarkably well. Years after Manet's death, Claude Monet offered the
work to
the French government, and it's been a Parisian museum fixture ever since.
Manet would have been pleased. He knew that to appreciate her, we just
needed to look a little longer. "Time itself imperceptibly works on
paintings," he said, "and softens the original harshness." The shock she
provides now is one not of outrage but of awe.
One need only bask in the heady loveliness of Olympia, the shadows between
her fingers, the curve of her belly, the contrasts of light and dark, to
understand the depth of Manet's talent. But when we look deeper -- at the
complexities and contradictions and beauty and brutality of his work -- his
true genius emerges. Art to Manet wasn't a story about gods or saints or
kings. It was about real life, as ordinary as commerce, as easy as sex.
To worship a goddess is easy, but to love a human -- especially one who
offers no hint of reciprocation -- is far more work, and infinitely more
thrilling. Manet brought the hidden world of the everyday into the light and
made it remarkable. For all that's reserved about Olympia's demeanor, the
passion of her creator is there in every stroke and every line. She may
withhold her heart, but we, helpless, are under her spell forever.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
About the writer
Mary Elizabeth Williams is the
host of Salon Table Talk.
Thu Sinh
news:3DA506D5...@fastmail.fm
>
> [Rated R - parental advice. Cho anh US cu`ng anh JG. Anh TS (and...) co'
> the^? ddo.c ke'...]
Ca'm o+n anh VG dda~ cho ddo.c ke'! DDe^m nay ddo.c tho+ "u+o+'t a't"
cu?a Nga, nhi`n hi`nh anh gu+?i ta(.ng va` the^m truye^.n ddi'nh ke`m
la`m sao tui ngu? cho ddu+o+.c !!!
Bie^'t dde^`n ai dda^y ??? :)))
TS
>
> Manet's "Olympia"
>
> [masterpiece]
> http://www.salon.com/ent/masterpiece/2002/05/13/olympia/story.jpg
> http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/cultureshock/flashpoints/visualarts/images/olympia.jpg
>
> With a single shocking canvas depicting a prostitute in repose, Édouard
> Manet ushered in the brave nude world of modern art.
>
> - - - - - - - - - - - -
>
> By Mary Elizabeth Williams
>
>
> [story]
--
Posted via Mailgate.ORG Server - http://www.Mailgate.ORG
Nga Ngo
Anh 3 ba('t dde^`n ba'c vG ddo' ..
Nga chi? la`m tho+ ... ngu ngo+ tho^i ma` ...
Ba'c vG post hi`nh cho anh 3 xem cho ne^n ba^y gio+` anh 3 mo+'i
ngo+ nga^?n, nga^?n ngo+ nhu+ va^`y ne` ...
;)
nn
"Thu Sinh" <thu...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:eb63a9fbdfa4dc3858...@mygate.mailgate.org
Thu Sinh
news:cacdff0e01787997d7...@mygate.mailgate.org
>
> Anh 3 ba('t dde^`n ba'c vG ddo' ..
>
> Nga chi? la`m tho+ ... ngu ngo+ tho^i ma` ...
May chi? la` tho+ "ngu ngo+" chu+' ne^'u kho^ng cha('c thu+'c
suo^'t dde^m :))
> Ba'c vG post hi`nh cho anh 3 xem cho ne^n ba^y gio+` anh 3 mo+'i
> ngo+ nga^?n, nga^?n ngo+ nhu+ va^`y ne` ...
>
> ;)
Ba('t dde^`n ca? hai la` cha('c a(n :)) Ngu+o+`i du`ng chu+~,
ngu+o+`i tru+ng hi`nh :))
TS
>
> nn
Nga Ngo
Ba'c vG uiii ....
"Anh TS" cu?a ba'c ddang ba('t dde^`n ki`a ..
Ba'c co' the^m ... "qua`" na`o dde^? dde^`n cho anh TS dde^m nay
ho^ng???
nn
"Thu Sinh" <thu...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:467948e1fb796ec00e...@mygate.mailgate.org