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Always nice to have reminders of how ideas and tastes change and evolve.
The 19th Century’s Most Scandalous Painting Comes to New York
“Olympia,” the brothel scene that birthed modern art, crosses the Atlantic for the first time in the Met exhibition “Manet/Degas.”
“A colossal ineptitude,” one enraged critic called it. “Her face is stupid,” another wrote. The papers declared it “shapeless,” “putrefied,” “incomprehensible.” They said it “recalls the horror of the morgue.”
And when the Parisian crowds rolled into the Salon of 1865, they too went berserk in front of Édouard Manet’s painting of a courtesan, her maid and her high-strung black cat. Spectators were sobbing, shouting, getting into scuffles; the Salon had to hire armed guards. The picture was so stark that visitors kept trying to puncture the canvas with their umbrellas. “Never,” reported one of Paris’s better literary reviews, “has a painting excited so much laughter, mockery, and catcalls as this ‘Olympia.’”
He is more than just the greatest painter of the 19th century; he’s the supreme model of how an artist can meet the times head-on, and rewrite the rules of culture as the world outside jerks forward. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/09/a...et-museum.html
It is rather in your face, even by modern standards; I find myself sharing the servant's apparent sense of distress.
Recalls to mind the infamous stage actress Tallulah Bankhead's longtime habit of parading around buck naked in her dressing room at the Shubert Theatre with the door wide open. "Why do you do that," her friend Estelle Winwood asked her, "When you have so many lovely frocks at your disposal?"
It is rather in your face, even by modern standards; I find myself sharing the servant's apparent sense of distress.
Recalls to mind the infamous stage actress Tallulah Bankhead's longtime habit of parading around buck naked in her dressing room at the Shubert Theatre with the door wide open. "Why do you do that," her friend Estelle Winwood asked her, "When you have so many lovely frocks at your disposal?"
Nice story!
Quote:
Originally Posted by Zenstyle
If this country had been settled by normal Europeans and not religious fanatics, this prudishness would have never existed over here.
Not sure I agree. Maybe it's, If this country had been settled by the French and not the British, this prudishness would have never existed over here.
I have found the general [outraged] response to this painting hilarious. IMHO, it isn’t the nudity that is scandalous—there are many, many female nudes in the history of art—especially French art—that show a lot more skin than Olympia. But this painting actually shows the object becoming the subject by returning the viewer’s gaze.
And to make the painting even more scandalous, I have long argued (based on an interpretation provided by an historian in a book I purchased long ago at the Musee d’Orsay) that the subject of the painting is not just a woman in her boudoir but, rather, a successful prostitute. In such an interpretation, the flowers are a present from a client; the woman’s expression is non-plussed because, as a sex worker, she is not only comfortable with her nudity in private but, also, with it being on display; and, as my former French teacher put it so well, her direct gaze at the viewer transforms them into a client.
Scandalous indeed.
I was so disappointed to have missed this exhibit but, living in MA, the journey to New York would have been difficult. I do hope that a similar exhibit comes to Boston at some point.
I have found the general [outraged] response to this painting hilarious. IMHO, it isn’t the nudity that is scandalous—there are many, many female nudes in the history of art—especially French art—that show a lot more skin than Olympia. But this painting actually shows the object becoming the subject by returning the viewer’s gaze.
And to make the painting even more scandalous, I have long argued (based on an interpretation provided by an historian in a book I purchased long ago at the Musee d’Orsay) that the subject of the painting is not just a woman in her boudoir but, rather, a successful prostitute. In such an interpretation, the flowers are a present from a client; the woman’s expression is non-plussed because, as a sex worker, she is not only comfortable with her nudity in private but, also, with it being on display; and, as my former French teacher put it so well, her direct gaze at the viewer transforms them into a client.
Scandalous indeed.
I was so disappointed to have missed this exhibit but, living in MA, the journey to New York would have been difficult. I do hope that a similar exhibit comes to Boston at some point.
I agree. I was taught that the painting was scandalous because she was a courtesan and brazen about it.
I agree. I was taught that the painting was scandalous because she was a courtesan and brazen about it.
So glad you mentioned this because, every time I’ve said that she was a sex worker, the response has been usually, “No, she wasn’t,” which I have never understood. It’s so obvious. And Manet died of syphillis.
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