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Olympia and Un bar aux 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.
The scandal returns through Manet, a conventional, bourgeois man.
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 1 - Olympia, The Story of a Split Society, The Critical Reception
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 2 - Olympia, The Story of a Split Society, A Philosophical Taboo
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 3 - Olympia, The Story of a Split Society, From Sexual Hypocrisy to Gender Revolution
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.
Chapter 4 - A Bar at the Folies Bergère, Iterative Interpretations
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