Edouard Manet. The Absinthe Drinker. 1858-1859. Oil on canvas.

I'm currently working on a biography essay for Manet that will eventually be assimilated into my final paper.

More Sources:

Mathews, Patricia Townley. 1999. Passionate discontent: creativity, gender, and French symbolist art. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Allard, Sébastien, Henri Loyrette, Laurence Des Cars, and David Radzinowicz. 2007. Nineteenth century French art: from Romanticism to Impressionism, post-Impressionism and Art Nouveau. Paris: Flammarion.

Garb, Tamar. 2008. The body in time: figures of femininity in late nineteenth-century France. The University of Kansas Franklin D. Murphy lecture series. Lawrence, Kan: Spencer Museum of Art, University of Kansas in association with University of Washington Press, Seattle

Mathews, Patricia Townley. 1999. Passionate discontent: creativity, gender, and French symbolist art. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Manet's Le déjeuner sur l'herbe ("The Luncheon on the Grass") — originally titled Le Bain (The Bath) — is a large oil on canvas painting. Created in 1862 and 1863, its juxtaposition of a female nude with fully dressed men sparked controversy when the work was first exhibited at the Salon de Refuse. The piece is now in the Musee d'Orsay in Paris. The shock value of a woman, naked as can be, casually lunching with two fully dressed men, which was an affront to the propriety of the time, was accentuated by the familiarity of the figures.One interpretation of the work is that it depicts the rampant prostitution that occurred in the Boise de Boulgogne, a large park at the western outskirts of Paris, at the time. This prostitution was common knowledge in Paris, but was considered a taboo subject unsuitable for a painting. Indeed, the Bois de Boulogne is to this day known as a pick-up place for prostitutes and illicit sexual activity after dark, just as it had been in the 19th century.

Peter J. Gartner, Art and Architecture: Musee D'Orsay, 2001, p.180

Nana, 1877, is an example of one of Manet's later works which follows Olympia and Le Dejuner sur l'herb. This painting is somewhat less shocking then its predecessors because the courtisan is clothed. Still she remains similar to the other two paintings in her defiant stare and prominence in the painting. The fact that her male caller is such an unimportant part of the composition did cause a stir. For a man to play such a minor role to woman, a courtesan no less, in the same painting was not usually done.

The painting was probably named after Emile Zola's fictional heroine of L'Assommir and Nana.

Olympia was the most scandelous representation of a prostitue in 19th century painting. Or so was called out by the critics of the salon. For example, Victor de Jankovitz wrote that "the expression of [Olympia's] face is that of being prematuraly aged and vicious; the body's putrefying color recalls the horror of the morgue." The critic Geronte called Olympia "that Hottentot Venus, with a black cat, exposed completely naked on her bed, like a corpse on the counters of the morgue, this Olympia is dead of yellow fever and all ready arrived at an advanced state of decomposition."
- Berheimer, Figures of Ill Repute, p 102

Such drama! Why was the paiting so threatening? While the cricts of the period were often drowned in erotic nudes, shamefully created to flatter the male viewer; depicted frontally and sans pubic hair, when the saw Olympia they cried scandal and saw death. Why? One can hardly look at Olympia's face today and recall the "horrors of the morgue" or the "yellow fever." Olympia's scandal, I would posit, is due to its simultaneous activation and exposure of the dynamics of the production of woman as fetish in patriarchal consumer society.

Basic outline, 1st draft:

Introduction:

-prostitution and prostitution in the arts an immense presence.
-statements about female sexuality and misogyny at this time
-appropriate art vs. in appropriate art
-Manet’s Dejuner sur l’herbe, Nana, et Olympia. Why the problems?
His early masterworks, Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe, Nana, and Olympia, engendered great controversy and served as rallying points for the young painters who would create Impressionism. Today, these are considered watershed paintings that mark the genesis of modern art.

Prostitution in 19th century parisian life:

-Origins, numbers, practice.
-examples in artwork

Acceptable art work:

-“Scholarly pieces”: Titian’s Venus, etc.

Dejuner’ sur l’herbe, 1863:

-description
-controversy
-analysis

Olympia, 1865:

-description
-controversy
-analysis

Nana, 1877:

-description
-controversy
-analysis

On Manet:

Conclusion:

What I'm beinging to find interesting is that Manet's Olympia was deemed "vulgar" and "immoral" by the majority of critics seemingly because Olympia gaurded her sexuality; placed her hand firmly over her gentiles as if to suggest that it were in fact, her property; not the viewer's or her patron's. Titian's Venus met no simlar outcry with her pubic-hair-less privates, only delicately and suggestively covered by her hand, seducing the onlookers with a sincere look of "come hither." Thank heaven she was called "Venus" and her little dog was near by to remind us of her fidelity.



"..and elsewhere he notes that diverse critics, in 1865 and since, have found Olympia somehow masculinized, or androgynous. As far as he is concerned this response is a "wrongheaded" reaction to the figure's nonconformity to the traditonal notions of Woman. "Surely Olympia's sexual identity is not in doubt," Clark remarks, "it is how it belongs to her that is the problem.""
-Figures of Ill Repute

More likely research question as the last is putting me up a creek:

Why is the prostitue ubiquitous in the art of 19th century French Impressionism?
-Not only because of her pressence as a socai phenomenon but, more importantly, because of her function in stimulating artistic strategies to controll and dispel her fantasmic threat to male mastery.

"There is, in this idea of prostitution, a point of intersection so complex- lust, bitterness, the void of human relations, the frenzy of muscles and the sound of gold - that looking into it makes you dizzy; and you learn so many things! And you dream so well of love!" -Flaubert

Research Question: (Possibly)

How does prostitution of the French Impressionist era affect the image of women in the West and in the modern period?

I am currently gathering information and resources while narrowing my thesis statement. My topic of study involves prostitution in French impressionism.

I have gathered the following sources:
*Clayson hollis: Painted Love: Prostitution and French Art of the Impressionist Era
*Charles Berhiemer: Figures of Il Repute: Representing Prostitution in Ninteenth-Century France
*Katie Hickman: Courtasans: Money Sex and Fame in the 19th Century
*Robert L. Herbert : Impressionism: Art, Leisure, and Parisian Society

I also bought my plane ticket- I'll be in France on the 4th of Febuary, which will either greatly enhance my research or just make it a lot more difficult. We shall see!

In addition to submitting finished assigments via email, I will use this blog to update my work, research, and progress throughout the term.