Édouard Manet
Édouard Manet
Throughout this essay I will assess and examine the relationships between Edouard Manet’s Olympia and Gypsy with a Cigarette in terms of Manet’s perspectives and involvement with the public perceptions of prostitution, problematic depiction of gypsies and ‘othered’ sitters, the ornamentation of Laure in Olympia and Manet’s transition into modernism. France had been a source of socio-political tension since the 1789 French Revolution. Napoleon III became Emperor after the 1848 revolution and appointed Baron Haussmann to modernise Paris into the cultural capital of Europe. The social, political and cultural spheres of public and private life were blurring as Paris evolved into a more theatrical city of desire and pleasure. Manet served to display Paris’ ‘dark side’ in his depiction of individuals who would have been considered peripheral in society – dissolving bourgeois behavioural standards through modernity.
Manet’s Olympia caused a controversy of carnal proportion at the 1865 Paris salon, serving as a pictorial manifestation of the changing social attitudes to prostitution in modern Paris. Manet seldom commented on his socio-political intentions for Olympia, however through visual analysis we can observe how Manet ‘offered the empire a perfect figure of its own pretended social playfulness, of the perfect and fallacious power of money.’. There was a strong fear of invasion as prostitution appeared to forego police control, visibly imitating and existing in the same public spaces as the bourgeoisie. The private was no longer personal, as rents had risen, brothels relocated to the suburbs, and an increase of ‘hotel garnis’ were set up for independent streetwalkers, instilling a belligerent public provocation. Olympia created such a visceral reaction in the salon as the contrast to traditionally accepted nudes – depicted in ‘the strict antithesis of sex’ courtesans in allegorical, historical or mythological terms – was considered to be a corrupted nude of ‘vicious strangeness’. Manet’s subverts the canon and invites the 1865 Parisian audience to blench at the dark visible contours of her figure, her suggestive hand in place of a fig leaf, the pallid skin tone, and her direct stare causing the viewer to become implicit in her sexuality (fig.1). Manet does not try to separate the nude from sex, but in dressing Olympia in a necklace, earrings, shoe, bracelet and flower, exaggerates her nakedness. What’s more, Manet challenges the public’s class attitudes, as the only signifier of Olympia’s class is her body. Her body is not the ideal male fantasy and so is condemned as of the lowest class and manly or animalistic. This is evident in critics such as Amedee Cantaloube who described her as a ‘female gorilla’, demonstrating Manet’s success in highlighting the bourgeois discomfort with an aesthetically non-conformist prostitute, in control of her sexuality.
Olympia can be compared with Gypsy with a Cigarette as representative of Manet’s interest in depicting the socially ‘othered’ individuals of modern Paris. Manet was heavily influenced by Spanish culture, notably inspired by Velasquez and Goya – who’s styles are reiterated in Olympia’s dark bold contour (fig.1), and the expressive brushwork and vivid colour palette of Gypsy with a Cigarette (fig.2). After the 1850s, gypsies and the concept of ‘la Boheme artistique’ was derived from the perceived creative irresponsibility of gypsy life. Manet’s idea of gypsies in modern Paris would have been shaped by popular literature such as Victor Hugo’s 1831 ‘Notre Dame de Paris’ and George Sand’s 1853 ‘La Filleule’ which depicted gypsies as the symbol of the artist, romanticised and rich with metaphorical symbolism. As a result, Manet’s depiction of Gypsy with a Cigarette, despite only being discovered after his death in 1883, would have been considered a modern innovative subject, representative of ‘a virtually unchanged ethnicity’. Art historian Marilyn R. Brown argues that ‘By choosing a subject from nature that contains an innate symbolic content, Manet presents to the viewer not an overt symbol, but the thing itself’. However, I would argue that Manet falls into the category of white-gaze exoticism in his depiction of Gypsy with a Cigarette, depicting the nameless woman through bright rich colour palette, dark tanned skin, ebony hair, swaths of orange material, cigarette hanging nonchalantly out of a slightly smirked mouth. The expressionist brush work and primitive impressionism in areas such as the black horse on the left can be interpreted as reminiscent of the unsophisticated nature of the gypsy when compared to bourgeoise Parisian life. The pose of hand on head and hip appears of a forced casual nature, highlighting the ornamentation of the gypsy woman. The cigarette barely held by her lips, a social taboo confidently depicted by a woman far removed from Parisian expectation (fig. 2). Manet’s attempt at Modernism in portraying the furthest woman from Parisian bourgeois standards, whilst aesthetically beautiful, appears to play most prominently on the exoticism of the subject.
Manet’s portrayal and ornamentation of minorities can also be examined in Olympia through the black maid ‘Laure’, a model Manet used three times, who he described affectionately as ‘Laure, tres belle negresse’. Manet’s ideas of black presence in modern Paris would have been shaped by the French abolition of territorial slavery in 1848, the socially diverse ninth arrondissement where the impressionists frequented, his own strong republican views, and the post war increase of French Caribbean residents. Scholar, Denise Murrell discusses how Manet’s depiction of Laure demonstrates his initiative to use models ‘who were part of his daily lived experience’ in the northern ninth and seventh arrondissements. Manet also had personal friendships with Baudelaire’s French-African mistress Jeanne Duval and popular mixed race writer Alexandre Dumas who he often painted. These personal friendships and inclusion of Laure in Olympia demonstrate the possibility for social transgression to the point of bi-racial friendship, relationship and collaboration on art. The racial caricatures popular in the media at the time, such as ‘The Hottentot Venus’ (fig.4) indicate a racial anxiety – similar to that of the prostitute – in fear of outsiders existing shamelessly in ordinary public life. Murrell argues that ‘Manet’s Olympia is among the first modernist paintings in which a black woman is portrayed not as an exorcised foreigner but as part of working class Paris.’, however, I would argue that Manet’s ambivalent painting of Laure’s skin as blending into the dark background falls into the orientalist stereotype of the black servant represented as inferior to the emphasised white skinned central figure. Manet chooses to enhance the modernist style, creating a dark plain background, at the cost of reducing Laure to another overlooked attendant (fig.1). Whilst this does portray Manet’s understanding of black presence in modern Paris, this understanding is reductive of black women only able to exist in roles of service to white clientele. Laure’s role in Olympia thus demonstrates Manet’s coveting of modernity over racial activism.
Manet’s Olympia and Gypsy with a Cigarette convey Manet’s success in creating the genre of ‘Modernism’ in subverting modern Paris’ traditional presentation of subject and painterly values. First, I will define what I mean by ‘Modernism’, as Manet’s rejection in the 1860s of compositional and aesthetic artistic traditions perpetuated by the Old Masters, and encapsulation of experimentation reflective of the socio-political philosophies of the era. The expressionist loose brushwork in Gypsy with a Cigarette (fig. 2), the dark contours and hyperbolic paleness in skin tone in Olympia (fig. 1) and use of controversial non-conformist subjects in both pieces, demonstrate’s Manet’s challenge to the social order in depicting taboo sitters with modern impressionist handling. Haussmann’s initiative to modernise Parisian culture was catalysed by Manet’s painted narratives as he ‘claimed to be painting the truth’ in depicting the reality of Parisian inhabitants rather than the idealised mythology and allegory perpetuated through popular painting of the time. Manet was recognised as the ‘self styled Realist, pupil of Courbet’, understood as ‘deliberately bold and experimental achieving great truth of tone’, with a ‘charm of naivete and vigour derived from Goya.’ Manet introduced Spanish influence in vibrant confident colour palette and bold brush work, inspired by Goya and Velasquez. Art historian Michael Fried describes ’He was the first to act by reflexes and thus simplify the painter’s metier.’, evolving with whatever influence had inspired him at the time. This is particularly evident in the modelling of Olympia’s pose on Titian’s Venus of Urbino (fig. 4), in which Manet takes inspiration from the Old Master but produces an evolved composition including provocative motifs which challenge public perceptions. For example, Titian included a dog at the feet of Venus, signifying loyalty and fidelity, whilst Manet juxtaposes a satirical cat with an erect tail – perhaps of phallic symbolism in furthering the social discomfort with female sexuality (fig. 1). This reflexive nature is represented through Manet’s inability to remain static in one style, and is simplifying in the sense of releasing canonical art from classical restraints in order to gain social approval. Manet’s ideas of modern Paris are represented truthfully through his fearless modernist style in both pieces, introducing expressionist, impressionist Spanish influences and social commentary on both the presentation of women and movement away from archaic classical expectations. Manet’s ideas of modern Paris are thus shown through his bold Modernist painting of Parisian life as it was in reality.
To conclude, the relationships between Manet’s Olympia and Gypsy with a Cigarette are most prominent in their shared unconventional subjects of a self-assured, sexually confident prostitute, contrasted with a black working class woman, and the exoticism of a gypsy woman. Manet provides a social commentary on modern Paris through depicting the subjects of stigma between the bourgeoisie and growing visibility of prostitution, and falls into the problematic portrayal of a gypsy woman as exotic and engaging in her otherness. Similarly, with Laure, Manet represents black presence in Paris as evolving into the everyday working class – however, he could have utilised his platform in both instances to depict these women outside of the hegemonic white middle class culture as surpassing aesthetic interest solely due to their exoticism. Furthermore, these paintings convey Manet’s idea of progression in the art scene of modern Paris through his handling and composition in introducing Modernist techniques, catalysing the movement away from Naturalism into Impressionism.
Bibliography
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O’Grady, L., ‘Olympia’s Maid: Reclaiming Black Female Subjectivity’, Afterimage, vol. 20, 1992.
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