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Olympia and A Bar at the Folies Bergère
Two Masterpieces by Édouard Manet
With Olympia and A Bar at the Folies Bergère, Édouard Manet created two masterpieces that would go on to be marked by scandal. By examining the norms of academic painting and prostitution, we can better understand why this particular nude painting, despite the many acclaimed nudes, aroused such hatred.
Chapter 1 - Olympia, The Story of a Split Society, The Critical Reception
The same jury that condemned Manet to exhibit his Luncheon on the Grass at the Salon des Refusés in 1863 allowed Olympia (both now in Musée d'Orsay) to be shown at the Salon two years later. Goodness! Critics cried out, denouncing the debasement of the academic nude — an art form that was supposedly only within the grasp of the greatest minds. Baudelaire encouraged Manet in veiled terms: ‘You are only the first in the decrepitude of your art!’
Chapter 2 - Olympia, The Story of a Split Society, A Philosophical Taboo
By parodying the nude in Olympia, Manet exposes the hypocrisy of his contemporaries. Originally intended as an exercise celebrating the primacy of drawing, the nude has no sensual purpose, only an intellectual one. By displaying a prostitute at the Salon under the guise of an academic nude, Manet calls into question the morality of the Academy of Painting and Sculpture's conventions and jury.
Chapter 3 - Olympia, The Story of a Split Society, From Sexual Hypocrisy to Gender Revolution
Bourgeois morals imposed strict modesty on wives, while prostitution, cleverly concealed in brothels and regulated by a specific regulation known as the French system, satisfied the sexual needs and fantasies of frustrated husbands. By conflating the common prostitute and the academic nude in Olympia, with clear inspiration from Titian's Venus of Urbino, Manet denounced the hypocrisy of his contemporaries. His audacity caused a scandal. Reading by T. J. Clark.
Chapter 4 - A Bar at the Folies Bergère, Iterative Interpretations
In 1882, cartoonists and critics mocked the visual inconsistencies in A Bar at the Folies Bergère, which is now housed at the Courtauld Institute of Art. However, this final masterpiece by Manet, which was exhibited at the Salon, established him as a master of his art. Whether viewed as a religious painting or as a precursor to postmodernity, which fascinated Michel Foucault and Thierry de Duve, A Bar at the breaks with the Renaissance tradition of perspective. It opens up to the contemporary world, questioning the viewer's role in their relationship with the artwork.
Bibliography
Splendeurs et misères : image de la prostitution, 1850-1910, Orsay, Flammarion, 2016
Julia Kristeva, Visions capitales, Fayard, 2013.
Timothy James Clark, Image of the People – Gustave Courbet and the 1848 Revolution, Thames and Hudson, 1973
Bradford R. Collins ed., Twelve Views of Manet's Bar, . Princeton Series in 19th Century Art, 1996
Michel Foucault, La Peinture de Manet, Conférence à Tunis, 20 Mai 1971
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