Edouard Manet's Painting Olympia example essay topic

Edouard Manet (1832-1883) a French impressionist painter was a very significant person and made great contribution into the world art. Manet recreated French art as he was the inspiration to later Impressionists to sweep across Europe. He was of a wealthy background but did not use this wealth to help further his career. He mingled with much of high society, such as the great poet Charles Baudelaire, and used them in much of his pieces.

His first works were among the many that were rejected from the salons due to their lack of romanticism, instead a portrayal of immorality and harshness. While following in the footsteps of the Old Masters, he sought to perfect the link between sight and the mind. He managed to do so with his bold brushwork capturing modern life and his appreciation for every delicate stroke of the brush. Despite his mastery of painting, critics constantly condemn his works. His brilliant technique, founded on the opposition of light and shadow with as little half tone as possible, on painting directly from the model with the intense immediacy, and on a restricted palette in which black was extremely important, helped him to create a new style; yet one founded on Velazquez, Goya, and Hals, allofwhomcouldbestudiedinParis. The next painting that was submitted to the Saloon was ' "The Luncheon on the Grass".

This was immediately rejected for its portrayal of a naked woman posing with two clothed men, but Manet exhibited it at the salon des refuses. In 1865 he managed to submit and exhibit "Olympia" to the salon, although it caused a great scandal. In this painting, Manet depicted a prostitute gazing seductively and proudly at her viewer. This piece sent French society into an outrage, for its nudity of a young woman who enjoys the company of two young, and fully clothed, males.

It was considered to be a deliberate insult to society, and equally a landmark in art history, for its blatant refusal of conventional forms and techniques. It was a mark that the expression of thought and of beauty could merge into one by the stroke of natural colors and realist light. When Edouard Manet's painting Olympia is hung in the Salon of Paris in 1865, it is met with jeers, laughter, criticism, and disdain. It is attacked by the public, the critics, the newspapers. Guards have to be stationed next to it to protect it, until it is moved to a spot high above a doorway, out of reach. Although considered his greatest, this piece continued Paris's outrage toward Manet and his new movement of art.

Olympia was the name for a whore in French literature; the flowers and the veils intensified the sexuality of the portrait, combined with the erotic gaze of the model and watchful eyes of her maid. This painting a threat to the morals of society and an outrage to the social order attained at that time. Manet, through his work, implanted the thoughts of realistic impressionism, in the steps of the great Gustave Courbet, into the minds of so many who changed this worldwide appreciation. With Olympia, Manet rebels against the art establishment of the time. Taking Titian's Venus of Urbino as his model, Manet creates a work he thinks will grant him a place in the pantheon of great artists. But instead of following the accepted practice in French art, which dictates that paintings of the figure are to be modeled on historical, mythical, or biblical themes, Manet chooses to paint a woman of his time -- not a feminine ideal, but a real woman, and a courtesan at that.

And he paints her in his own manner: in place of the smooth shading of the great masters, his forms are painted quickly, in rough brushstrokes clearly visible on the surface of the canvas. Instead of the carefully constructed perspective that leads the eye deep into the space of the painting, Manet offers a picture frame flattened into two planes. The foreground is the glowing white body of Olympia on the bed; the background is darkness. In painting reality as he sees it, Manet challenges the accepted function of art in France, which is to glorify history and the French state, and creates what some consider the first modern painting. His model, Victorie Meu rent, is depicted as a courtesan, a woman whose body is a commodity. While middle-and- upper class gentlemen of the time may frequent courtesans and prostitutes, they do not want to be confronted with one in a painting gallery.

A real woman, flaws and all, with an independent spirit, stares out from the canvas, confronting the viewer, something French society in 1865 is perhaps not ready to face. Similar uproar and the controversy surrounding these two paintings (Luncheon on the grass and Olympia) truly dismayed Manet. It was not at all his intention to create a scandal. He was not a radical artist, such as Courbet; nor was he a bohemian, as the critics had thought. Another famous Edouard Manet's painting Le Bon Bock (The Good Pint), created for the Salon of 1873, was widely identified as a French Alsatian patriot drinking his regional beer. The picture came to serve as a popular symbol of the recent loss of the Alsace-Lorraine region by France to the Germans and a liberal political symbol of national introspection.

It led French intellectuals to question traditional institutions along with notions of patriotism and national identity. His work were frequently rejected by the Salon jury (he played an important part in the 1863 Salon des Refuses) and, if hung, was ill-received by critics, his friend Emile Zola almost alone in defending him. After 1870, due partly to the influence of Ber the Morisot, he adopted the Impressionist technique and palette, abandoning the use of black and his genius for analysis and synthesis for a lighter, sweeter, color and freer handling. He also tended more to sentimental subjects.

He always longed for official recognition and refused to take part in the Impressionist exhibitions organized by Degas. Although he was friendly with Monet, Renoir, Sisley, and Pissarro he bitterly resented being coupled with them in newspaper criticisms as the leader of "Manet's gang". At the end of his life he was given the Legion of Honour and the vilification of his works abated, chiefly because Impressionist handling and color were beginning to affect academic painting. The tragedy of his life was that he was the perfect academic painter, unrecognized and rejected by the body whose dying traditions he alone could have revived. Edouard Manet is one of the most intriguing masters of Nineteenth century art. His unique style and technique mark him as an innovative painter, and indeed, Manet is often hailed as one of first truly modern artists.

The paintings of Manets time offered visions of female beauty, women were idealized and unreal, often depicted as goddesses, nymphs or other mythological figures. But Manets pictures were too close to reality. Being an extremely talented person Manet managed to combine the beauty of colors and style with the rebelling subjects of his time. Art historians have tried to define Manet by associating his works with various Nineteenth century movements, including Realism, Impressionism, and even Symbolism. But it is clear that Manet went beyond these art movements and created his own personal style of painting.

He was the one who put invaluable contribution into the world collection of masterpieces. The one who opposed his time.