Manet’s masterpieces

Manet has some surprising similarities with his contemporaries.  He took a long sea voyage to Rio, his close friend Charles Baudelaire sailed to Mauritius, Paul Gauguin sailed to Tahiti.  Like Arthur Rimbaud, Manet had a gangrened leg amputated.  Like Baudelaire and Guy de Maupassant, Manet died an agonising death from syphilis.

Manet studied with the academic painter Thomas Couture for six long years, then completely rejected his frozen style, classical figures and moralistic themes.  Manet’s models gave contradictory impressions of his character.  One exclaimed, “Posing for M. Manet was no joke—some rough sessions.”  Another declared, “He was the only one I looked up to.  He was engrossed, courteous, distant.  He was so high class!”

Manet’s Spanish subjects, influenced by Velázquez and Goya, seem wooden and fake, stodgy and lacking vivacity.  The Spanish Singer mistakenly and awkwardly strums the guitar with his left hand.  The dancers in The Spanish Ballet seem about to topple over.  The Reclining Young Woman in Spanish Costume resembles a foreshortened blob.   The sword-wielding Mademoiselle Victorine in the Costume of an Espada looks as if she couldn’t kill a pussycat.  In these works Manet was unable to break away from the influence of the Spanish masters and create his own style.

Kathryn Calley Galitz’s Manet: The Great Works (Rizzoli, 240p, £40/$55) has many defects.  She outrageously claims to be a “bestselling author” and one can imagine crowds swarming into supermarkets to buy her volumes on 18th-century French painting.  Her vague introduction promises, “This book considers his now iconic works in the context of his family, who frequently modeled for him, his ongoing dialogue with the art of the past and contemporary avant-garde art, and his engagement with modern Paris and contemporary history.”  It has nearly 100 handsome illustrations, but only 68 printed pages, and the text is entirely familiar.  It lacks an index, which would have shown Galitz’s extreme dependence on previous critics.  A recurrent phrase is “as has been widely acknowledged.”  She includes at least 60 repetitions, which reappear yet again in the 6-page chronology.  The paintings, unfortunately, are placed far away from their discussions in the text.

Galitz mentions that Manet clearly influenced Cézanne, Gauguin and Picasso.  But in a pointless attempt to include diversity, she reproduces three mediocre paintings by contemporary women and damages her reputation as an art historian.  Nicole Eisenman was surely not influenced by Manet, but by the American painters, Thomas Hart Benton and Reginald Marsh.  The Black artists’ connection to Manet is non-existent and absurd.

She constantly quotes the indignation and derision of Manet’s contemporary critics, but the more the critics condemned him, the more he was admired by his avant-garde contemporaries.  His friend Emile Zola perceived that “Manet will be one of tomorrow’s masters and is destined for the Louvre.”

Galitz is puzzled by two crucial incidents.  She states that the paternity of Léon Leenhoff, the son of Manet’s wife Suzanne, “remains unknown.”  In fact, it is known that he was the son of either Manet fils or Manet père.  Again, for reasons that “remain unknown,” Manet slashed open Mme. Manet at the Piano (1868), a gift from Edgar Degas.  In fact, the reason for Manet’s iconoclastic explosion is known.  In Degas’ double portrait, Suzanne sits in profile at the piano.  But on the left the nattily dressed Manet sprawls on the sofa.  Manet thought the portrait made him look like a philistine, bored and dozing off during his wife’s performance.  In a fury, he slashed the portrait—the psychological equivalent of stabbing Degas himself.

Madame Manet at the Piano

Much more could be said about the masterpieces of Manet, who could be surprisingly sexy.  His bold Asparagus (1880) resembles a penis with an erect head.  Nana (1877) reveals, as every fetishist will attest, that underwear is sexier than nudity.  Her lover eagerly waits for his mistress to finish dressing, before undressing, for they seem to be going out before going to bed.

A Bundle of Asparagus

Shocking in its day, Luncheon on the Grass (1863) portrays two well-dressed men sitting next to a naked woman, while another woman dressed in white is bathing in the background.  Several revealing details suggest what will happen next.  The men plan to disrobe and join the women in some plein air frolics.  The student’s right thumb and bather’s right arm point to each other, as if he were summoning her to join him.  The hand of the man seated in the middle rests next to, and may even touch, the woman’s smooth white bottom.  Her bare left sole and the student’s left shoe touch each other.  Her foot is placed seductively between his open legs; and if he moved his eyes, he could see between her legs. Their provocative posture is enhanced by the presence of wine and fruit, traditionally associated with bacchanalian orgies.

Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe

Titian’s Venus of Urbino (1534), which inspired Manet’s Olympia, does not portray “two servants.”  Dressed very differently from her maid, the mistress seems to be punishing or beating the servant, who’s down on her knees, for disobedience or theft.  The alert, protective and hostile black cat in Olympia (1863) comes from Edgar Allen Poe by way of Baudelaire.  Quivering with feline electricity, the cat seems to be hissing at the approaching lover who’s about to enter its domain.  The vertical frame of the screen behind Olympia leads the eye down to her crotch.  Both modest and provocative, she conceals with spread fingers the sex that’s reserved for her lover, while also drawing attention to it.  The viewer, who can look at Olympia but may not touch her, experiences voyeuristic and vicarious pleasure by seeing with his eyes what the possessive lover will soon enjoy with his body.  Galitz doesn’t make the crucial distinction between courtesan, demimondaine and prostitute.  Like many kept women in life and literature, then and now, Olympia has a wealthy lover who maintains her in comfortable circumstances and provides jewellery and an attendant maid.  She awaits his arrival, naked and ready to pleasure him.  Like a true gentleman, he sends her a bouquet of flowers and, as the maid discreetly withdraws from the scene, delights in her body before exclusively enjoying her favours.

Olympia

In Dead Toreador (1864), the small pool of blood, leaking from an unusually high wound in the left shoulder of this exquisite corpse, does not seem sufficient to kill him.  His espada lies on his right side, his right palm rests on his chest.  His red muleta, still held in his left hand, is spread flat on the ground.  His hair, eyebrows, matador’s costume and white silk stockings all have subtle shades of grey.  If the painting is turned sideways, the toreador appears to be standing up.  He seems more vivid when dead than Manet’s living Spanish subjects.

The Dead Toreador

Reading (1866) portrays the full-bosomed, high-coloured Suzanne—grandly seated on a sofa with her arms extended, and wearing an elegant white dress, with jet necklace and black belt—who dominates the painting.  Her black beads and black sash set off her open neck and broad waist.  Her right hand extends toward the swordlike leaves of a green plant.  Her son Léon, in profile, wearing a brown suit and standing behind her against a dark background, stares down at his open book.  She seems oblivious to Léon, who seems to be reading silently to himself.

The Reading

In May 1867, the Mexican revolutionaries led by Benito Juárez captured the Archduke Maximillian, Emperor of Mexico and younger brother of the Austrian Emperor Franz Joseph.  In Manet’s intense, immediate and almost cinematic drama, The Execution of Maximilian (1867), the emperor and his two generals hold hands in a gesture of fraternal support.  The dark-skinned Mejía, struck by the fatal bullets, falls backwards but has not yet collapsed on the ground.  The bearded Maximillian and Miramón stand upright and bravely await their imminent death.  The extremely close range, reduced from three paces to the length of the long-barreled rifles that shoot out red tongues of flame, would have splattered the victims’ blood all over the executioners.  Manet clearly delineates the face of the emperor and his generals, but leaves the riflemen facing away and featureless.  The casual indifference of the red-capped sergeant, loading his rifle to finish off the victims, increases the horror of their sacrifice.

The Execution of Emperor Maximilian

In The Balcony (1869), between two green shutters and a green railing, the painter Berthe Morisot dramatically appears on Manet’s artistic stage.  A distinguished-looking gentleman, in high wing-collar and wide violet tie, looks into the distance and raises his hands as if startled by something he’s just seen.  Standing in front of him, putting on fawn-colored gloves and holding her green umbrella at the same angle as a violin, is the concert violinist Fanny Claus.  Seated below the gentleman, Morisot wears a white dress and green ribbon with gold brooch, and holds a fan.  Bare-headed, with wild curls on her forehead and black hair flowing down over her shoulders, she has tense fingers, pale face, large dark eyes, sensuous lips and an anxious, troubled expression.  Manet’s three figures, looking in different directions, are dramatically isolated and detached from each other.

The Balcony

Manet portrays in Repose (1870)  a more pensive and dreamy aspect of Morisot’s character.  She’s seated with her delicate right hand extended on the edge of the warm brown sofa.  The fingers of her left hand spread gracefully between her handkerchief and the star-shaped indentations of the sofa buttons.  She’s holding a fan and wearing a billowing white dress, with one white-stockinged, black-shod foot showing beneath the wavy hem.  Her long dark hair hangs down her shoulders and her narrow waist is secured by a black sash.  Resting yet alert, the charming Morisot is gentle, tender and engaging.

Le repos

Berthe Morisot with a Bouquet of Violets (1872) is Manet’s most intensely Spanish, most beautiful and most powerful portrait.  Wearing a high-crowned black hat, its brim dipping down on her forehead, black scarf and black dress—with her white blouse open at the neck and pointing down to the corsage of violets—Morisot confronts the viewer directly and close to the frame of the picture.  The ribbons hanging from her hat accentuate her scattered strands of hair.  Her face is half in shadow, half in light; her brown irises are unusually large, her nose is delicate, her lips inviting.  Violets, reflecting her emotional intimacy with Manet, symbolize the love of truth and the truth of love.

Berthe Morisot with a Bouquet of Violets

The woman and child in The Railway (1873), appear outside the vertical iron fence that separates them from the train tracks below.  They are connected by their red hair, their coral earrings, by the dark blue dress of the one and the pale blue bow of the other, by the black ribbons around the woman’s neck and the child’s hair, by the white ruffles of the woman’s cuffs and those decorating the girl’s sleeve.  The woman is seen from the front; the girl—with bare left arm extended toward the woman and red hand gripping the iron railing—is seen from the back.  They complement each other and form a unified whole.  The seated woman, holding the girl’s sleeping puppy, looks up from her book to face the viewer, while the standing girl remains absorbed in the spectacle of billowing smoke and racing steel.

My poem “Manet’s A Bar at the Folies-Bergère”, in strict rhyme and metre, both describes and interprets Manet’s masterpiece:

The rosy barmaid, with a wasp-like waist,

Dispenses drink which she herself can’t taste.

With lacy coat, full bosom, ample hips,

She mouths her sadness through her pouting lips.

A shining chandelier and moons of light

Illuminate the crowd in that dark night.

A vase of tangerines reflects the glow

Of chartreuse and champagne that stand below.

The mirror, magic instrument of art,

Bends all perspective, stills her beating heart.

The gentleman, who should be face to face,

Is shifted by illusion from his place.

This cryptic woman, choker at her throat,

Removes herself from him, remains remote.

The music, laughter, spectacle delude,

Prevent our knowing if she’s pure or lewd.

The man might offer freedom from her task,

But she could be enslaved within his grasp.

Farewell, then, follies, pleasures, heaving breath,

The dying painter limned the gent as death.

Jeffrey Meyers has published Painting and the Novel, Impressionist Quartet, biographies of Wyndham Lewis and Modigliani, and a book on the Canadian realist painter Alex Colville. 

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