Art History

• Manet


  French painter who pioneered modern art
• Realism


  Focus on the "Here and Now"
• Impressionism


  Focus on modern life and new ways of seeing, experimentation with paint
• Democratically elected President of the French Republic, Louis Napoleon, soon became dictator as Emperor Napoleon III (in 1851)
• A sense of stability established after 1860 when restrictive censorship was loosened and it became known as the "Liberal Empire"
• French workers now had the right to strike and organise (unions/guilds)
• Women's education improved
• Paris' population grew from one million in 1836 to one and a half million by 1856
• Until 1851, Paris was still in many respects medieval: narrow and twisting streets, wooden houses, inadequate water and sewage facilities, city squares, parks, and cemeteries were built over, seriously restricting the movement of light, air, people and goods
• Cholera and typhoid outbreaks were common in these conditions
• Emperor Napoleon III set Baron Haussman the task of reconstructing Paris and so "Haussmanisation" began in 1852, lasting 20 years
• 12000 buildings were knocked down in the urban redesign
• Haussmanisation changes


  • New water and sewer systems
  • New boulevards and the straightening and widening of old ones
  • Installation of street lighting
  • Creation of 110 times more park areas
  • New residential and commercial buildings with harmoniously similar heights, facades and creamy coloured stone
  • Improved health and transportation
• Emperor's intention with Haussmanisation


  To gain the support of the people by breaking up radical communities and making it difficult for revolutionaries to erect barricades
• Within a generation, Paris became a city of fashion and elegance reflecting the conservative homogeneity of those who could afford to live in the city
• The Haussman Project provided employment at a time of massive unemployment
• The Bourgeoisie (Middle-class) began to truly rise above the third estate to enjoy the fruits of modernisation and the convenience brought by the Industrial Revolution - travelling, nightlife, entertainment
• Modern agriculture continued to develop and famines ended
• Following Courbet's "Pavillion of Realism" 1855
• The Salon of 1863 had 5000 works submitted but only 2000 were accepted. Some by Courbet and Manet were rejected. The unacceptable work was called "a serious danger for society"
• Napoleon III had conservative artistic tastes but followed public opinion, contributing to the French avant-garde by insisting that the public should be allowed to judge for itself
• The Salon des Refuses was held in an adjoining building at the Louvre. It attracted about 4000 people on one Sunday
• The Salon des Refuses legitimized the idea that artists could paint what they wanted, judged as individuals rather than as a proponent of a particular school. It is sometimes seen as the starting point of modern art
• Artists began increasingly to display their work in other venues – studios or dealer art galleries
• Industrialization and manufacturing advances continues
• Photography continues to develop
• Technological advancements e.g. railway creates the modern lifestyle
• New materials e.g. cast iron and mass produced steel, aluminium paint tubes = no more pigs bladders!
• Manet's influences


  Spanish master painters Velasquez and Goya - use of black and areas of flat bold contrast
• Manet's paintings


  • The Absinthe Drinker (1858-59)
  • The Fifer (1866)
  • Music in the Tuileries Gardens (1862)
  • Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe (1863)
  • Olympia (1863)
  • Portrait of Émile Zola (1868)
  • Nana (1877)
  • A Bar at the Folies-Bergère (1882)
• Manet's stylistic features


  • Broad applications of colour
  • A sense of freshness through technique: 'alla prima' wet on wet
  • Flat shallow pictorial depth using the contrast of tones
  • Stark, direct lighting minimises tonal modelling of the figures
  • Use of black: avoided half tones
  • Strong dark outlines
  • Often places figures within a stage-like setting
  • Dared to use the grand scale of classical art to present modern contemporary context settings and subject matter
  • Attempts to liberate art from conservative classical academic expectations
• Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe (The Luncheon on the Grass) created an uproar when it was first exhibited in 1863
• The bather is too large and is portrayed in sharp focus, without the blurring that would be natural in a figure placed in a distance - the effect is flattened sense of space
• The naked woman sits impudently beside clothed men (dressed in a contemporary manner; no reference to history or mythology!), looking directly out of the picture at the viewer - a shameless prostitute?

  
• Manet is following the practice of many Old Masters; the bather, nude, and a still life - but in a strange way; the basket is overturned and rests on the woman's discarded clothes; tradition vs. modernity?
• The landscape is so loosely painted… is this a finished painting?
• Manet's Salon paintings often commented on art history showing his conservative side. References to art history helped to legitimise the 'avant garde' nature of his artistic development to himself as much as to a prospective viewer
• Art history references in Manet's paintings


  • The Rustic Concert by Giorgione
  • Detail from a larger engraving of the Judgement of Paris, made around 1515 by an engraver called Raimondi, after a drawing by Raphael
• A naked woman seated alongside fully dressed men might seem perfectly acceptable in a pastoral idyll painted by a Renaissance artist, but when translated into a modern context, the morality of the situation seemed highly questionable
• Olympia, 1863 - Manet based the composition on 'Venus of Urbino', a famous work by the 16th century Italian master, Titian