Edouard Manets Olympia Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Edouard Manets Olympia - Essay ExampleHowever, young Edouard rebelled against the will of his father, who wanted for him to become a lawyer. He went to follow his passion of studying painting at the Louvre, and abroad in Holland and Italy.1 His work, constantly refused by the establishment, received the support of his close friend Baudelaire and was inspired by Velazquez, Rembrandt and Titian. Manet painted a wide phase of subjects (seascapes, still lifes, portraits, as well as urban, religious and historical scenes) and his most famous paintings are Musique aux Tuileries, Djeuner tire lHerbe, Le Fifre, Un Bar aux Folies-Bergres and of course, Olympia. Supported by Emile Zola, he also painted his portrait in 1866.2When he died in his early 50s, the Impressionists were making ruse that insisted it was of the moment - a train steaming out of a station, rain on the boulevard, Manets art is at the forefront of this discovery of contemporary life during their time.3To this day, numerous artists had begun to contend the stale conventions of the Academy when Manets Olympia was accepted for the Salon in 1865. Never had a work caused such scandal. Critics advised pregnant women to avoid the picture, and it was relegated to thwart vandals. She is not a remote goddess only if emphatically in the present, easily recognized among the demimonde of prostitutes and dancehalls.4 Viewers were not used to the paintings flat space and shallow volumes. To many, Manets color patches appeared unfinished. counterbalance more shocking was the frank honesty of his courtesan it was her boldness, not her nudity, that offended. Her languid pose copied a Titian Venus, but Manet did not cloak her with mythology. In Olympias steady gaze there is no apology for sensuality and, for uncomfortable viewers, no escaping her reality.5Anthony Julius agrees with that premise of escaping reality. In his book, Shock and art Transgressions The Offenses of Arts (2001), he deems that such art succeed s by alienating people, exposing our prejudices, sabotaging our habits. So Manets Olympia, a naked prostitute in a classic pose, gazes confirm at us, unmasking the centuries of male dominance and voyeurism disguised as an interest in the artistic nude painting of myth and history. He claims that the purpose of the painter, which is to convey his artistry is concealed by the shock value and diminishes its rubric of value as an art. In Heschels analysis of Geigers study of the Jewish Jesus (1988), she draws an analogy to Manets Olympia, whose direct stare at her audience discomforted a world used to the demure artistic portrayal of women and concluded that it was unchristlike and making it less of a scholarly gaze. Geigers Jewish study of Jesus unsettled the Christian, or at the very least culturally Christian, academic world. According to Heschel, by reversing the situation in which Christians, especially the scriptural critics of the age, wrote about Judaism to one where Jews wr ote about Christianity, Geiger made a major adjustment to the power relations surrounded by the two religions. Where Christian theologians excoriated Pharisees and Pharisaism, Geiger argued purposely that Jesus was a Pharisee par excellence the ideal that Jesus preached so