Manet's 'A Bar At The Folies'

It is evident that the people in this painting are modern parisians that could be found walking down the street during this time period. Another thing that can be noted are the visual brush strokes all along the painting. During this time period it was a common practice to put in the extra time to make everything in the piece realistic and very detailed. This painting was meant to confuse the public. No one knew what it was actually about.

The painting “A Bar at the Folies-Bergere” a first modern painting that portrays young woman resting on the marble counter, the girl looks below the blond bangs with distant eyes and serene. Has the neckline adorned with a bouquet of flowers in front of it are bottles of champagne, beer and peppermint schnapps. She is the symbol of his time and the reality of his time reflected on his face. The tones of the picture, cold and creamy, remember rain and inspire melancholy. Through a game of perspective and optics, Manet gets the strange impression that we are also confronted the waitress the picture, as if we were at the Folies-Bergère and we saw that dandy reflecting itself. the result of the distorted logic of the work - is perceived tension.

The artist depicts an initial confusing and weirded-out thought for the viewer at first glance, but as one deeply examines the art, the subject matter begins to become more clear. The vision being shared in this non-objective painting has a context of placing one in the standing of Mr. Man by gaining height and freedom from the (white) bars that are rising on each level that represent conflict which traps one in a “cage” of misery. The unbalanced symmetry of having the left side take up more space with little action, and the right side being smaller with the action unraveling, makes the viewer break down each composite perspective. For the left side, the mysterious female muse, Moon-Face, has an unproportional face that is almost blushing with shades of light pasty orange, with the mouth wide open. The energetic mood is amplified by the tone of yellow that is splashed in the mouth, representing a loss of words or at a state of disbelief. The female’s lower half is created with tints of red that enhances the curves on her body, as if chiaroscuro connects the light and dark contrast to show outline of the breasts, stomach, and hips in

In other words, he wanted the viewers to see paintings as a two dimensional surface and not three dimensional pictures. With having such mindset, Manet’s work was always being critiqued harshly by the French Academy and the public. One of his best known paintings which like Ingres’s Grande Odalisque received very brutal critiques was his Olympia done in 1863. Manet not only wanted to portray a modern life scene, but also wanted to make social commentaries throughout his work. In Olympia was he was able to make a comment about the French social and sensual lifestyle. Olympia is a painting of a reclined nude figure that appears to be a prostitute because of the title that he had given it (during the 19th century, a professional prostitute was called an Olympia). According to the critics Manet’s figure was not known as a “nude” figure, but was known as a “naked” figure due to the thin black ribbon that she had tied around her neck, the golden bracelet that she had around her arm, the fashionable slippers that she was wearing and finally the Orchid flower that she had on the side of her hair. Critics not only gave Manet a hard time because of his subject matter and the story that he was narrating with it, but also gave him a hard time because of the “un-finished” look that he had given to his painting by using the color patch technique.

but I believe it has a deeper meaning almost as if it a picture of Mary Cassatt at a young age just beginning to learn her passion and focusing solely on it. I believe she also would have wanted equal opportunities for women. Each of her teacher such as Charles Chaplin help to hone her painting skills, making her dream possible and also giving her a way to contribute to the women's suffrage

A reason this painting has sparked so much interest and analysis is the mind-boggling perspective and reflection. One of the first observations the viewer makes is that the barmaid and the barmaid’s reflection do not go together. Pullman

In late 19th century Paris, cafés-concerts (best described as “glorified beer halls” (Clark 206)) were a very popular destination for the people of Paris. Cafés-concerts became an integral part of Parisian social life, as they were visited by hundreds of people each night, regardless of class. A bar at the Folies Bergère became the topic of Edouard Manet’s last painting, as Manet tried to portray the new, “modern” Paris, and the introduction of mass production during this time. A Marxist art historian, T.J. Clark finds this particular painting important because it revealed a lot about the new, modern Paris, and Manet’s intentions with the painting. Clark focuses more on the emergence of the new social class during this time, and how this affected the role of women in Paris. The painting, A bar at Folies Bergère, has historical significance because of how it depicts modernity in the context of the emergence of a new social class (the petite bourgeoisie), the introduction of mass production, and the changing role of women.

Edouard Manet’s painting A Bar at the Folies-Bergere, was completed in 1882 and is considered his last great painting. He displayed it at the Paris Salon just one year before his passing. This painting as vexed art historians throughout the years for its complex visual subject matter and leaves Manets true interpretation of his painting in the air for discussion. Although there are many interpretations, A Bar at the Folies-Bergere is an avant-garde; viewer engaging painting meant to give the viewer a new perspective, hence the mirror.

The art and beauty in this painting is exemplified through the eyes of Boucher. It starts with a beautiful couple taking a rest after picking up some followers. Their clothing looks very elegant and colorful which shows that they are aristocrats. The man’s eyes are gazing at a shepherdess who gathered her own flowers. Their eyes are locked despite the man having his own woman right in front of him. The light brushstrokes of the dresses, flowers, and trees

The model in the painting was viewed more as a real subject or person and less as a generic face of upper class in a work of art. It was so odd to some viewers they seek to find the real women in the painting witch was unusual.

He explains the different forces that bring us (mainly men) to look at others in a way that many would consider demeaning, “What attracts our eyes and rouses our blood is only partly instinctual. Other forces contend in us as well: the voices of books and religions, the images of art and film and advertising, the entire chorus of culture” (Sanders 116). Sanders highlights that the way that a lot of women are portrayed in our culture, is more like and object than a human being, “For the instant of the photograph, they had become their bodies, as a moment of hoisting a barbell, as a ballerina does in the whirl of a pirouette, as we all do in the crisis of making love or dying” (Sanders 117). Although most of the time the author seems to feel somewhat ashamed of his “instinctual desires”, he does highlight others views of people throughout history, “William Carlos Williams tells us on the opening page of his autobiography, (I think that from that arises the drive which empowers us all. Given that drive, a man does with it what his mind directs)” (Sanders 119). Towards the end of the story, the author quotes Simone de Beauvoir. Simone, gives a reason as to why women dress up like dolls, and sometimes wish to be viewed like dolls. Simone says, “The ‘feminine’ woman in making herself prey tries to reduce man, also, to her carnal

Impressionism, in contrast, strove not to capture the toils of society in a moralistic setting like Realism did, but to evoke a general mood in the viewer. Painting was transformed from the idea of capturing a moment on canvas to creating a moment on canvas; painting was reduced to its own surface, “no longer transparent means but opaque ends” (Schneider 43). This was exemplified by Manet’s own ideas of painting not as “sight” but as “insight” into the human condition, driven by an artist’s intuition. Manet and the impressionists began painting en plein air, outdoors in the fresh air where they were closer to their subjects and captured the light of fleeting moments like sunrises and sunsets with quick brushstrokes intended to evoke general mood in the viewer based on the capture of light and tones in the painting, leading to the namesake “impression” left by the movement.

All the figures in the painting were real individuals in Manet’s life. The man towards the left is Ferdinand Leenhof who is his soon to be brother in law, the man on the right is his younger brother Eugene Manet and most importantly the nude woman who left everyone stunned was a female model, Victorine Meurent, who makes another appearance in Manet’s other painting “Olympia” where once again she is the topic of debate. As all the figures were recognizable and were portrayed in an explicit narrative made it even more difficult to be displayed alongside traditional paintings.

Therefore, it is evident that literary techniques are utilised to exploit the Beauvoirian idea of women “denying [their] feminine weakness” in order to justify their strength, while the “militant male... she wish[es] to be” however, Marlene accepts femininity and only wears a skirt to work.

In the painting Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe by Édouard Manet, there is a depiction of a naked female next to two other dressed men on what appears to be a picnic. There is also a second female who is dressed not very fairly in the back of the other three. The painting was made in 1863 and currently resides in Paris, inside of the Musée d’Orsay. The painting was made on a canvas with oil paint. The primary object of this proposal and the term paper will be the two fully dressed men and how one is reaching out to the other while the other seems to be sitting next to the naked women and what this portrays.