Did Manet Invent Modernity?

 

Edouard Manet is having his first major retrospective in France since 1983 at the Musée d'Orsay. The exhibition, "Manet, the Man Who Invented Modernity," on view through July 17, shows how the painter's work was interpreted during his lifetime as he moved between classical tradition and a completely novel way of representing reality. Equally excited by art, daily life, women, and politics, Manet was in touch with the movements of his time but grounded in a very subjective vision of the world, the body, and pictorial composition. His paintings are visual wagers against the norm, representing a raw beauty that often defied proportions and conventions — painterly ones as well as moral ones. Well before the invention of moving pictures, Manet had an almost cinematic way of looking at his surroundings, capturing movement as if with a camera lens and zooming in on powerful images.
ARTINFO France sat down with Musée d'Orsay curatorStéphane Guéguan, who organized the show, to talk about Manet's connection to Impressionism, abstraction, and subjectivity.
I like things to be simple. Insofar as this exhibition is structured according to specific themes, I thought it was necessary to respect the timeline, so as not to confuse the public. I am convinced that even though Manet is a painter whom we think we know well, he still makes a lot of people confused. He's a painter who is hard to situate in the history of French painting — a bit before Impressionism, or a bit after, but where exactly? We're trying to re-examine this today by asking a question: Do we need to keep Manet in the Impressionists' circle, or, on the contrary, should we show that he belongs to another kind of art history, the history of "great painting"? For Manet, there was no distinction between ancient and modern art. He wanted to be as modern and ambitious as Titian or Velázquez in their time. Manet kept all genres of tradition alive, and renewed them.
Can Manet be considered an Impressionist, if an atypical one, or was he marginal to the movement?
He's not an Impressionist painter, even though Impressionism affected the evolution of his own painting. The Manet of the mid-1870s, by his themes and his writing, which became clearer and more energetic, is unconceivable without this emulation that Impressionism created. But, as Georges Bataille said, it's a "distant Impressionism." I call it "exploded Impressionism." It's important to emphasize the way in which he appropriated what emerged in the early 1870s and made it his. The term "marginal" should be used very carefully. The exhibition tends to show that Manet can quite naturally be seen as part of the tensions that characterize the context of Parisian painting between 1860 and 1880. He came from Thomas Couture's studio, where his training was quite traditional. He used that to invent something, but always in a tense relationship with tradition. Even if he had difficulties with the Salon jury under the Second Empire and the Third Republic, he is someone who always felt a need to show his painting in the Salon. The Impressionists blamed him for this, calling him bourgeois, but they didn't understand his ambition: to reach out to his public and to show, in the space of the salon, painting that was made for this space: large-scale paintings, focused on figures. Manet also had social ambitions.
What do you think of art historian Thierry de Duve's idea that Manet is a precursor of 20th-century art?
Several things justify such a view. As Matisse once said, Manet simplified painting. It's not that he reduced its scope, but instead brought its formal vocabulary back to essential things. In the 20th century, this was felt as a fundamental step forward. Some abstract painters think that Manet almost turned his back on representation. Plus, with Manet, the relationship with the viewer changed. He had that way of forcing you to look, of entering into our space to destabilize us. In his greatest paintings, he questions all the viewer's traditional reference points.
Manet had a very particular way of making his models seem alienated, especially the women. It's kind of like a filmmaker with his favorite actresses.
This aspect of his work has been studied a lot in recent years. People realized that Manet's painting was very autobiographical. He brings his closest circle into his paintings, such as his wife and Léon, who is either his illegitimate son or his half-brother. He also brings in the wider circle of his acquaintances, including writers and models such as Berthe Morisot, who takes on all roles. Manet tried to emphasize this in the shows that he organized during his lifetime, especially in 1867, in the pavilion alongside the World's Fair. By putting together paintings with identical models, he highlighted his role as a director, and the fact that realism is also subjective. Even if he accepts having his painting categorized as realistic or naturalistic, he reminds viewers that there is no neutral image of reality. In these paintings, which show the spectacle of modern life, there is his own vision and his own personality.
He seems sometimes to twist his own viewpoint, by creating exaggerated or orderly shapes.
That's something that I once had a hard time accepting, but I am able to accept it today. It's about playing with signs. The paintings hesitate between creating verisimilitude and unreality. The viewer oscillates between the realistic effect, which is very impressive in Manet's work and caused a lot of scandal during his time, and this way of reducing matter, letting it live for itself. He plays on the most brutal illusions, and at the same time lets us see the workings of painting itself.
What great artists or movements of the 20th century followed in Manet's footsteps?
Several artists were consciously part of his lineage. For Matisse, "Le Torero Mort" (originally titled "L'Homme Mort") was one of the greatest paintings of the 19th century. He saw in it the essential reduction of the means of painting that he himself was seeking. Picasso flirted with Manet before producing his series of variations on the "Déjeuner sur l'Herbe." He did in the 20th century what Manet was seeking in his time. In the 1950s, the writer Louis Aragon sensed this relationship, saying that Picasso was the Delacroix of the 20th century. My exhibition tries to show that Manet was the Delacroix of the new way of painting

Edouard Manet is having his first major retrospective in France since 1983 at the Musée d'Orsay. The exhibition, "Manet, the Man Who Invented Modernity," on view through July 17, shows how the painter's work was interpreted during his lifetime as he moved between classical tradition and a completely novel way of representing reality. Equally excited by art, daily life, women, and politics, Manet was in touch with the movements of his time but grounded in a very subjective vision of the world, the body, and pictorial composition. His paintings are visual wagers against the norm, representing a raw beauty that often defied proportions and conventions — painterly ones as well as moral ones. Well before the invention of moving pictures, Manet had an almost cinematic way of looking at his surroundings, capturing movement as if with a camera lens and zooming in on powerful images.

ARTINFO France sat down with Musée d'Orsay curatorStéphane Guéguan, who organized the show, to talk about Manet's connection to Impressionism, abstraction, and subjectivity.

I like things to be simple. Insofar as this exhibition is structured according to specific themes, I thought it was necessary to respect the timeline, so as not to confuse the public. I am convinced that even though Manet is a painter whom we think we know well, he still makes a lot of people confused. He's a painter who is hard to situate in the history of French painting — a bit before Impressionism, or a bit after, but where exactly? We're trying to re-examine this today by asking a question: Do we need to keep Manet in the Impressionists' circle, or, on the contrary, should we show that he belongs to another kind of art history, the history of "great painting"? For Manet, there was no distinction between ancient and modern art. He wanted to be as modern and ambitious as Titian or Velázquez in their time. Manet kept all genres of tradition alive, and renewed them.

Can Manet be considered an Impressionist, if an atypical one, or was he marginal to the movement?

He's not an Impressionist painter, even though Impressionism affected the evolution of his own painting. The Manet of the mid-1870s, by his themes and his writing, which became clearer and more energetic, is unconceivable without this emulation that Impressionism created. But, as Georges Bataille said, it's a "distant Impressionism." I call it "exploded Impressionism." It's important to emphasize the way in which he appropriated what emerged in the early 1870s and made it his. The term "marginal" should be used very carefully. The exhibition tends to show that Manet can quite naturally be seen as part of the tensions that characterize the context of Parisian painting between 1860 and 1880. He came from Thomas Couture's studio, where his training was quite traditional. He used that to invent something, but always in a tense relationship with tradition. Even if he had difficulties with the Salon jury under the Second Empire and the Third Republic, he is someone who always felt a need to show his painting in the Salon. The Impressionists blamed him for this, calling him bourgeois, but they didn't understand his ambition: to reach out to his public and to show, in the space of the salon, painting that was made for this space: large-scale paintings, focused on figures. Manet also had social ambitions.

What do you think of art historian Thierry de Duve's idea that Manet is a precursor of 20th-century art?

Several things justify such a view. As Matisse once said, Manet simplified painting. It's not that he reduced its scope, but instead brought its formal vocabulary back to essential things. In the 20th century, this was felt as a fundamental step forward. Some abstract painters think that Manet almost turned his back on representation. Plus, with Manet, the relationship with the viewer changed. He had that way of forcing you to look, of entering into our space to destabilize us. In his greatest paintings, he questions all the viewer's traditional reference points.

Manet had a very particular way of making his models seem alienated, especially the women. It's kind of like a filmmaker with his favorite actresses.

This aspect of his work has been studied a lot in recent years. People realized that Manet's painting was very autobiographical. He brings his closest circle into his paintings, such as his wife and Léon, who is either his illegitimate son or his half-brother. He also brings in the wider circle of his acquaintances, including writers and models such as Berthe Morisot, who takes on all roles. Manet tried to emphasize this in the shows that he organized during his lifetime, especially in 1867, in the pavilion alongside the World's Fair. By putting together paintings with identical models, he highlighted his role as a director, and the fact that realism is also subjective. Even if he accepts having his painting categorized as realistic or naturalistic, he reminds viewers that there is no neutral image of reality. In these paintings, which show the spectacle of modern life, there is his own vision and his own personality.

He seems sometimes to twist his own viewpoint, by creating exaggerated or orderly shapes.

That's something that I once had a hard time accepting, but I am able to accept it today. It's about playing with signs. The paintings hesitate between creating verisimilitude and unreality. The viewer oscillates between the realistic effect, which is very impressive in Manet's work and caused a lot of scandal during his time, and this way of reducing matter, letting it live for itself. He plays on the most brutal illusions, and at the same time lets us see the workings of painting itself.

What great artists or movements of the 20th century followed in Manet's footsteps?

Several artists were consciously part of his lineage. For Matisse, "Le Torero Mort" (originally titled "L'Homme Mort") was one of the greatest paintings of the 19th century. He saw in it the essential reduction of the means of painting that he himself was seeking. Picasso flirted with Manet before producing his series of variations on the "Déjeuner sur l'Herbe." He did in the 20th century what Manet was seeking in his time. In the 1950s, the writer Louis Aragon sensed this relationship, saying that Picasso was the Delacroix of the 20th century. My exhibition tries to show that Manet was the Delacroix of the new way of painting.