Olympia (painting)
The painting Olympia , created in 1863 , is one of the main works of the French painter Édouard Manet . In the Paris Salon of 1865, the 130.5 × 190 cm painting triggered one of the greatest scandals in art history. Today the painting is owned by the French state and is on display in the Musée d'Orsay .
Image description
Stretched out on a bed is a naked young white woman with red-brown pinned hair. On the left side of the picture, she leaned her upper body half upright against some white pillows; her right arm supports her. The left hand covers her lap by resting on the right thigh. In this posture, with her head held high, the young woman turns not only her upper body but also her face openly towards the viewer, similar to a portrait. Her buttocks and crossed legs rest on a cream-colored cloth, lavishly decorated with flowers and gold-colored fringes on the edge, which covers part of the white bedding. She grasps one corner of the cloth with her right hand. The dark red upholstery of the bed can be seen on the side under the bedding. The young woman only wears a few accessories on her body: her hair is adorned with a large, pink bow. On her neck she wears a teardrop-shaped pearl, which is held by a narrow, black ribbon that is tied into a bow similar to a gift ribbon. Her discreet earrings go with the pearl. The right forearm is encircled by a gold-colored wide bracelet to which a pendant is attached. Dainty slippers made up her footwear, but the right slipper fell on the bed, leaving the right foot bare. But he is hidden by the legs of his left foot including his slipper.
Behind the bed is a black woman, leaning forward slightly, holding a lush, brightly colored bouquet of flowers wrapped in white paper in front of her breast. She turns to the lying woman and looks at her. She is dressed in a pink robe and a reddish headscarf. At the foot of the bed stands a small black cat with its tail raised high and looking directly at the viewer with its bright eyes.
The room, designed in dark colors, is presented with almost no spatial depth. A striking, gold-colored stripe divides it vertically into two differently sized halves and almost ends in the pubic area of the woman lying down. This stripe forms the border of the brown and gold wallpaper that covers the wall on the left, narrower side. The color of the wallpaper corresponds to the hair color of the woman on the bed. The right side of the background is a heavy dark green curtain, through the crack of which you can see a wall that could belong to an adjoining room. The same curtain material can be found in an only partially visible, curved drapery on the left above the head end of the bed.
The color design of the picture is limited to a few shades. The palette is essentially limited to white, black, a dark green going into blue, a golden brown and a red shade, as well as beige for the skin of the portrayed woman and the cloth on which she lies. The dominant white of the bed, which corresponds to the white of the flower paper, contrasts with the light skin of the lying woman against the very dark, sometimes black tones of the room furnishings, the dark skin of the woman holding the flowers and the black cat. The outlines of the cat and of this woman's head almost disappear against the dark background of the curtains. This strong light-dark contrast creates a horizontal division of the picture, which breaks the vertical of the golden line and the curtain folds in the background.
The pink red of the bow in the hair of the reclining woman is picked up in several shades of brightness by the red of some of the flowers in the bouquet, the pattern of the cloth on the bed, the red headscarf of the woman behind the bed and in the dark red upholstery of the bed. The dark green of the curtains, which tends slightly towards blue, is also reflected in the leaves of the bouquet, the pattern of the cloth, the greenish shades of the bedding and the flower cover, as well as in the slightly green-tinted border of the slippers.
The painting style of the picture is flat. Manet largely dispenses with the traditional, carefully graded, three-dimensional modeling of the motif. In individual areas, the colors detach themselves from the shape of the object to which they belong, for example in the bouquet containing a splash of color. This heralds the upcoming style of impressionism , of which Manet is considered to be the pioneer.
role models
The motif of the lying undressed woman has a long tradition in art history. Direct models for Manet's Olympia are Giorgione's Slumbering Venus from 1510 and Titian's Venus de Urbino from 1538. Both pictures show a naked woman in almost identical posture, whereby Titian's picture, which Manet copied on a study trip, has other similarities with his picture has: The Venus of Urbino and Olympia are both placed inside a house and also with Tizian the background is separated into two sections by a conspicuous perpendicular, which leads the view to the lap of the reclining woman. Both women depicted lean on their right arm in the same way, both wear a bracelet on the right, both let their left hand rest in their lap, and both turn their faces towards the viewer. In both depictions a pet is lying at the foot of the bed; with Titian it is a sleeping little dog. In addition, it is repeated that behind the lying woman there are clothed persons, thereby emphasizing their nakedness in the foreground.
The naked woman's direct and open gaze can also be seen in Goya's Die Nackte Maja , and the contrast between a light-skinned and a dark-skinned woman can also be found in the painting Esther or Odalisque by Léon Benouville from 1844. Here is the white one But woman clothed. In addition, the first nude photographs were made and distributed in Paris from around 1850 on, which depicted lying, unclothed women.
Giorgione:
Slumbering Venus
Titian:
Venus of Urbino
Goya:
The naked Maja
Léon Benouville:
Esther or Odalisque
Manet found inspiration not only in painting and photography, but also passages from the poetry collection Les Fleurs du Mal by Charles Baudelaire as a literary model for his Olympics . In it Baudelaire writes: "The sweetheart was naked, and since she knew my heart, she only wore her ringing jewelery" and elsewhere "I would have gladly passed my life ... like a cat at the feet of a queen".
Emergence
Édouard Manet's picture is signed and dated lower left: “éd Manet 1863”. In the same year Manet painted Breakfast in the Green , which caused a scandal in the Salon des Refusés in 1863. In the Paris Salon of the same year, Alexandre Cabanel celebrated a great success with his birth of Venus . Manet, fighting for his own recognition, could have received the inspiration for a nude painting through Cabanel's picture. During a stay in Italy in the 1850s he had already copied the Venus of Urbino ; so he had been familiar with this motif for years.
Little is known about the creation of the picture. There are two red chalk drawings of the nude that are considered studies. A 1,863-painted watercolor with the motive of Olympia 's how Françoise Cachin believed to have occurred after the painting and could be an intermediate step to two 1867 made etchings with the Olympic theme to be. Cachin comments on the creation of the picture: “... the project was carefully considered and indirectly supported by numerous exchanges of ideas with his [Manet] writer friends, whether with Baudelaire or Astruc. The pictorial concept is fed by museum art as well as life experience, literary influences and… humor ”and further:“ It cannot be ruled out that Manet… wanted to measure himself against the masters of the past and at the same time wanted to deliver a parody… ”. Hans LC Jaffé, on the other hand, wrote in the 1960s that Manet had tried with his works to translate mythology “into the language of his time” and “consciously limit himself to the realm of actual reality”.
Alexandre Cabanel:
The Birth of Venus
Édouard Manet:
Venus of Urbino
sketch after Titian
Édouard Manet:
Study for Olympia
red chalk drawing
Édouard Manet:
Study for Olympia
red chalk drawing
Édouard Manet:
Olympia
watercolor 1863
Édouard Manet:
Olympia
Etching 1867
Édouard Manet:
Olympia
etching with aquatint 1867
Édouard Manet:
Olympia
wood engraving
Image name and iconographic interpretation
For the representation of a female nude, artists from Giorgione to Cabanel often chose motifs from ancient Greece and gave the pictures titles such as Venus . In the 19th century numerous odalisques were created , among which the Grande Odalisque by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres is probably the best known. The naked woman as a painting therefore came from a bygone era, a world of myths or from a distant land with different moral concepts. The name Olympia is unprecedented in painting. In 1864, one year after the painting and one year before the picture was exhibited in the salon, Zacharie Astruc published a poem with the title Olympia :
| Quand, lasse de songer, Olympia s'éveille, | When Olympia's dreams come to an end |
| Le printemps entre au bras du doux messager noir | Spring enters the sweet messenger, black arm. |
| C'est l'esclave à la nuit amoureuse pareille, | She was destined to be a slave on the night of love, |
| Qui veut fêter le jour délicieux à voir, | But on the day she wants to celebrate beautiful sight: |
| L'auguste jeune fille en qui la flamme veille. | The noble woman in whom the flame glows. |
Astruc, a friend of Manet, wrote this poem after seeing the painting. It is not clear who got the idea for the name. The poem appeared in the catalog of the Paris Salon of 1865. In Manet's portrait of Zacharie Astruc from 1866 the painter does not quote his own Olympia , but the background from Titian's Venus of Urbino . The novel The Lady of the Camellias by Alexandre Dumas appeared as early as 1848 , in which Olympia is the name of the opponent of the title character, and during the time the painting was made, Olympia or Olympe was a popular nickname for prostitutes .
There were also symbolic references in the imagery: In Titian's Venus von Urbino , the women in the background are busy with a wedding chest. This points to domestic fidelity just like the sleeping dog at the feet of the naked. With Manet, however, the black servant brings the bouquet of an admirer; Flowers are traditionally considered gifts of love. The orchid in Olympia's hair symbolizes an aphrodisiac . Pearls are also seen as jewels of the goddess of love Venus, and like a ribbon, the pearl pendant separates the viewer from the complete nakedness of Olympia. The cat with its back erect and its tail up is the classic accessory for depictions of witches. It stands for bad omens and erotic debauchery. Olympia is not observed by the viewer as slumbering, like Giorgione's Venus , but she looks directly into his face. Direct eye contact with a naked prostitute is usually only made by her client.
The scandal
The salon
Manet first tried to submit a painting to the Paris Salon in 1859 . However, his motif of an absinthe drinker was not included. In 1861 he was able to get the first benevolent attention in the salon with the portrait of his parents and the Spanish singer . In 1863, however, his paintings again failed the jury of the Salon and were instead shown in the Salon des Refusés , where the scandal over Breakfast in the Green arose . Presumably the Olympia was planned for the Paris Salon of 1864, but since the model Victorine Meurent represented the main character in both pictures and Manet would have risked another scandal with another nude woman as a motif, he sent the episode of a bullfighter and a dead man instead of the Olympia in 1864 Christ held by angels in the drawing room; but even these were not received positively. It was not until 1865 that he submitted Olympia to the Paris Salon together with the Mockery of Christ . According to Pietro Aretino , Titian had already planned a mocking of Christ for Charles V in addition to a Venus , in order to underline not only his sensuality, but also his piety.
Paris society around 1860
While the painting was being made, Napoleon III. and the imperial court at the center of interest in Paris society. Otto Friedrich describes the second empire as an "operetta empire", since Napoleon III. only gained power after three attempted coups, he was not in the direct line of succession to Napoleon I and his family connections to his predecessor are in doubt. This dubious society also included Alfred Émilien de Nieuwerkerke , Director General of the State Museums and President of the Jury of the Paris Salon, who owed his professional career to an extramarital relationship with Mathilde Lätitia Wilhelmine Bonaparte . This cousin of the emperor, together with Nieuwerkerke, largely determined French cultural policy at the time. In this society, which is characterized by appearance and intrigue, the depiction of reality in itself was undesirable. But Manet did not see himself as part of this society, but rather as a member of an intellectual bourgeoisie, which he portrayed in his painting Music in the Tuileries Garden .
To openly portray such prostitutes in a city with more than 30,000 prostitutes and to refer to the large number of potential customers by looking directly at the viewer was revolutionary. In contrast to the transfigured, mystifying nudes of other painters, Manet shows a self-confident woman of his time in Olympia and thus brings painting, like Baudelaire parallel literature, from history to the present. With the Olympia , many art historians consider Manet to be the founder of modern painting.
The new way of painting
Manet's Olympia caused one of the greatest scandals in 19th century art. The reasons for this lay both in the motif of the picture and in the way it was painted. Manet, who was an admirer of Japanese art, renounced the careful nuances between light and dark cultivated by other painters. As a result, Olympia was not perceived by many of his contemporaries as a three-dimensional figure, but as a roughly composed, two-dimensional pattern. Gustave Courbet commented: "Everything is flat, without relief ... one might say, the queen of spades in a deck of cards who has just come out of the bath".
Julius Meier-Graefe described the novelty of painting with the words:
“He doesn't model. That is, he removes the special meaning of the modeling, which only serves the illusion, according to which the harmony of the colors and the structure of the masses had to be guided in the pictures of the academics, and sees the vision as the absolutely primary thing. The modeling has a relative validity only insofar as it does not impair the harmony and must be created simultaneously with the colored value, if at all. The old compromise between painting and sculpture ... is finally overcome. There is only painting. This postulate enforced with great energy ... makes Manet the undisputed leader of his generation. "
Hans LC Jaffé wrote about Manet's painting style:
“Manet… wants his painting not to be based on any questionable facts. That is why he first completely relies on his eyes and for the first time paints what he sees, not what he knows. Shadows become colored, reflections change colors. The sensual perception, the visible appearance is about to become the only valid reality. "
criticism
Manet's Olympia and the mockery of Christ caused violent reactions from the audience and newspaper critics. The color of the skin was criticized in both pictures. The realistic depiction of Christ lacks spirituality and he looks like a morgue. Before the Olympics , people gathered in the salon who mocked, laughed at and threatened the picture with walking sticks and umbrellas, until the painting was finally hung higher to protect it.
The scandal found a written response in numerous articles in the salon. Jules Champfleury wrote to Baudelaire: "Like a man who falls in the snow, Manet has left a hole in public opinion". Jules Claretie wrote in L'Artiste : “… these terrible canvases, challenges directed at the mob, antics or parodies, what do I know? ... What is this yellow-bellied odalisque, this cheap, I don't know where it was picked up ... ". Paul de Saint-Victor wrote: “As in the morgue, the crowd crowd in front of the wicked Olympia of M. Manet.” And Théophile Gautier wrote on June 24, 1865 in Le Moniteur universel : “A pathetic model ... The flesh tones are dirty ... The Shadows are indicated by more or less wide strips of shoe polish ”. Ernest Chesneau wrote: “… an almost infantile ignorance of the basic elements of drawing,… a tendency towards unbelievable meanness” and Félix Deriège wrote in Le Siècle of June 2, 1865: “This reddish brunette is perfectly ugly… The white, the black , the red, the green create a terrible roar on this canvas ”. There were also caricatures of Olympia : on May 27, 1865, Bertall's Olympia appeared in Le Journal amusingly and in the same month the Olympia of Cham in Le Charivari .
Bertall:
Olympia
in Le Journal amusing
Cham:
Olympia
in Le Charivari
Émile Zola was one of the few defenders of the Olympics . Addressing Manet, he wrote in L'Artiste in 1867 :
“For you, a picture is only a pretext for analysis. You need a naked woman and you chose Olympia first; You needed bright and glowing spots and you put in a bouquet of flowers; You needed black spots and you added a black one and a cat. ... I know that you have succeeded in an admirable way in creating the work of a painter, a great painter ... and powerfully translating the truths of light and shadow, the reality of things and human creatures into your own language. "
Zola, who had already demanded in 1866 “Manet's place is the Louvre , like Courbets, like that of all artists with a strong character”, was portrayed by Manet in 1868. This portrait also shows Olympia above the desk .
effect
The first painter who created a picture based on the model of Manet's Olympia was Paul Cézanne . His modern Olympia , created in 1870, went a step further and featured not only prostitutes and servants but also the suitor . Paul Gauguin copied Olympia in 1891, and Edgar Degas and Henri Fantin-Latour were also inspired by the work. In Pablo Picasso's parody of the Olympics from 1901, the clothed servant has been replaced by two naked men.
A wide variety of artists took up the Olympic theme throughout the 20th century . They included Jean Dubuffet , René Magritte , Francis Newton Souza , AR Penck , Gerhard Richter , Félix Vallotton , Jacques Villon , and Erró . Larry Rivers made a dark-skinned woman Olympia in 1970 and called his work I like Olympia in Black Face ("I like Olympia with a black face"). In the 1990s, the Olympia was created as a three-dimensional work of art. The American artist Seward Johnson created a sculpture based on Manet's Olympia entitled Confrontational Vulnerability . In 2016, the Luxembourg performance artist Deborah De Robertis caused a sensation when she presented herself naked in the Musée d'Orsay in front of Manet's Olympia in the same pose as the sitter in the picture and was reported for exhibitionism.
Exhibitions
The painting premiered in the Paris Salon of 1865. Two years later Manet showed the picture in his own pavilion on the edge of the world exhibition of 1867. The public could only see the picture again at two exhibitions in 1884, when it was first in the Manet memorial exhibition at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and was subsequently on display at the Drouot auction house. The painting was loaned to Suzanne Manet , the artist's widow, for an art exhibition during the Exposition Universelle in 1889, before it became state property. It was first exhibited in the Musée du Luxembourg before it entered the Louvre in 1907. After a further stop at the Jeu de Paume , it made its way to the Musée d'Orsay in 1986.
Since the picture has been in state ownership, it has rarely been shown outside of the museums mentioned. It was shown in the Paris Manet exhibitions in 1932 and 1952 in the Orangery and in 1983 in the Grand Palais , and in 2013 it became the exhibition “Manet. Ritorno a Venezia ”on loan from the Doge's Palace in Venice. In 2016, the painting was also on view in the Pushkin Museum in Moscow .
Provenance
Manet valued the Olympics in 1872 at 20,000 francs. and therefore higher than any of his other paintings. In the same year he had held the dead Christ by angels for 4,000 frs. sold and thus achieved the highest amount ever for a painting. He kept the Olympia all his life, and at the auction of his works in 1884 it was also sold for 10,000 francs. not a buyer, so the family bought the painting. Through the painter John Singer Sargent , Claude Monet learned in 1888 of Suzanne Manet's financial difficulties and her intention to buy the picture for 20,000 francs. possibly for sale to an unknown American. Then Monet launched a collection campaign to the picture for France to save . The required price is rather low when compared with prices of other artists. Around the same time, paintings by Jean-François Millet were sold for CHF 750,000. and by Jean-Louis-Ernest Meissonier for 850,000 frs. for sale. Monet finally managed to get 19,415 frs. get together, and Suzanne Manet agreed to sell. The French state accepted the donation. The donors for the Olympics included: Siegfried Bing , Giovanni Boldini , Jules Chéret , Emmanuel Chabrier , Gustave Caillebotte , Edgar Degas , Emile Auguste Carolus-Duran , Henri Fantin-Latour , Henri Gervex , Joris-Karl Huysmans , Stéphane Mallarmé , Alexandre Millerand , Claude Monet, Étienne Moreau-Nélaton , Pierre Puvis de Chavannes , Antonin Proust , Camille Pissarro , Augustin Théodule Ribot , Pierre-Auguste Renoir , Félicien Rops and John Singer Sargent.
literature
- Julius Meier-Graefe : History of the Development of Modern Art Volume I Munich, Zurich (1904) 1987 ISBN 3-492-10661-7
- Denis Rouart, Daniel Wildenstein : Edouard Manet: Catalog raisonné . Paris and Lausanne 1975
- Exhibition catalog Paris 1983: Manet . German edition Berlin 1984 ISBN 3-88725-092-3
- Exhibition catalog Paris 1983: Bonjour Monsieur Manet . Paris 1983 ISBN 2-85850-198-X
- TA Gronberg: Manet, a Retrospective . New York 1988 ISBN 0-517-03291-0
- Juliet Wilson-Bareau : Manet by himself . London 1991 ISBN 0-356-19161-3
- Françoise Cachin : Manet . DuMont, Cologne 1991 ISBN 3-7701-2791-9
- Eunice Lipton: Alias Olympia . New York 1992 ISBN 0-452-01135-3
- Otto Friedrich : Edouard Manet and the Paris of his time . New York and Cologne 1992/1994 ISBN 3-462-02366-7
- Beth Archer Brombert: Edouard Manet, Rebel in a Frock Coat . Chicago 1997 ISBN 0-226-07544-3
- Hans Körner: Disgusting nudity. “ Breakfast in the open ” and the “Olympia” by E. Manet, in a dispute over images. From Byzantium to Duchamp . Reimer, Berlin 1997 ISBN 3-496-01169-6 pp. 181-199 and color plate 7
- Michael Lüthy: Image and look in Manet's painting . Berlin 2003 ISBN 3-7861-1897-3 ( http://www.michaelluethy.de/scripts/edouard-manet-bild-und-blick-in-manets-malerei/ )
- Gabriella Belli, Guy Cogeval, Stéphane Guégan: Manet, ritorno a Venezia . Fondazione Musei Civici Venezia, Venice 2013, ISBN 978-88-572-1847-2 .
Footnotes
- ^ A b Charles Baudelaire: Les Fleurs du Mal in Françoise Cachin: Exhibition catalog Manet Paris 1983, German edition 1984, translation: Roman Piesenkam, p. 180.
- ^ A b Françoise Cachin: Exhibition catalog Manet Paris 1983, German edition 1984, translation: Roman Piesenkam p. 176
- ↑ a b Hans LC Jaffé et al .: 20,000 years of painting in the world. From cave painting to modernity . Weert, Holland 1967; German edition Herrsching 1985, Manfred Pawlak Verlag p. 296
- ^ Zacharie Astruc: Olympia. In: Françoise Cachin: Exhibition catalog Manet Paris 1983, German edition 1984, translation: Roman Piesenkam p. 179
- ↑ Otto Friedrich: Edouard Manet and the Paris of his time. German edition 1994, translation: Bernd Rüther and Barbara Scriba-Sethe, p. 67.
- ↑ Gustave Courbet quoted from Albert Wolff : Monsieur Manet. In: Le Figaro Salon of May 1, 1882; reproduced in Françoise Cachin : Exhibition catalog Manet. Paris 1983, German edition 1984, p. 182.
- ^ Julius Meier-Graefe: Manet. In: History of the Development of Modern Art, Volume II. 2nd ed. Pp. 263–264 (digital copy online )
- ^ Claude Pichois (ed.), Jules Champfleury in Lettres à Charles Baudelaire , reproduced in Françoise Cachin: Exhibition catalog Manet. Paris 1983, German edition 1984, p. 174.
- ↑ Jules Claretie: Deux Heures au Salon. In: L'Artiste from May 15, 1865, reproduced in: Françoise Cachin: Exhibition catalog Manet. Paris 1983, German edition 1984, p. 181.
- ^ Paul de Saint-Victor: Le Salon de 1865 in La Presse of May 28, 1865, reproduced in: Françoise Cachin: Exhibition catalog Manet. Paris 1983, German edition 1984, p. 181.
- ^ Théophile Gautier: Le Salon de 1865. In; Le Moniteur universel of June 24, 1865; reproduced in: Françoise Cachin: Exhibition catalog Manet. Paris 1983, German edition 1984, p. 181.
- ^ Ernest Chesneau: Le Salon de 1865, III, Les Excentriques. In: Le Constitutionnel of May 16, 1865, reproduced in: Françoise Cachin: Exhibition catalog Manet. Paris 1983, German edition 1984, p. 181.
- ^ F. Deriège: Le Salon de 1865. in: Le Siècle of June 2, 1865; reproduced in Françoise Cachin: Exhibition catalog Manet. Paris 1983, German edition 1984, p. 181.
- ↑ Émile Zola: Une Nouvelle Manière en peinture: Edouard Manet. In: L'Artiste: Revue du XIXe siècle of January 1, 1867; reproduced in: Françoise Cachin: Exhibition catalog Manet. Paris 1983, German edition 1984, translation: Roman Piesenkam p. 176.
- ^ Frederick William John Hemmings, Robert J. Niess (ed.): Émile Zola: Salons. Reproduced in: Françoise Cachin: Exhibition catalog Manet. Paris 1983, German edition 1984, translation: Renate Schein, p. 280.
- ↑ Penck refers to Manet's Olympia in his Guache Sans titre (Nu blanc sur fond rouge et noir) from 1980. Exhibition catalog Paris 1983: Bonjour Monsieur Manet , p. 52.
- ^ Luxembourg performance artist banished from the Paris museum. In: Die Welt from January 17, 2016.
- ↑ See Gabriella Belli, Guy Cogeval, Stéphane Guégan: Manet, ritorno a Venezia .
- ↑ Sophia Kishkovsky: Musée d'Orsay sends Manet's Olympia to Russia , article in the online newspaper The Art Newspaper from April 8, 2016. ( Memento of the original from September 16, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
