Oh how fun, my first post! Today, I would like to talk about one of my favorite paintings! This is Olympia, painted by Édouard Manet and completed in 1863. Olympia is a painting of interesting context, presenting questions about art and its very history.
An appropriation of Venus of Urbino, we see in this painting a deliberate contrast of that painting. In Venus of Urbino there are symbols of fidelity; a sleeping dog by Venus’ feet (man’s best friend) and a rose in her hand to show her love (if her being Venus herself as not enough to represent love). In Olympia, we don’t see that however, we see direct contrast to these ideals. At the end of the bed, there is a frightened black cat and these is a loss of any symbolism for love. Note, as well, the black tie around her neck; a common fashion for higher class mistresses of the time was this black neck tie. This painting is a critic of infidelity, one naturally seen and hardly spoken of in his day.
She is a sculpture almost in that she is rather flat compared to the rest of the painting. Olympia manages to be both present in Manet’s contemporary moment and yet frozen in her nakedness. This is where we see those aspects of previous art, for great art by academic standard was often clothed in beauty and mythology. Manet stripped this painting of academic standards, both by making his subject aware of her objectification as well as by not having those clean, almost nonexistent brush-strokes expected from artists of his time. Ridding his painting of the clothe of it being about beauty or mythology, by having her gaze out at the viewer (seeming to put us in the position of a male client), made tose of his time uncomfortable by her sexuality. Critics of the time even posed that Manet sexualizado her by only giving form to her hands, one that lay across her genitalia, even when art has done so for years. The only difference was that Manet was aware and not afraid to make others aware of this trend in painting throughout history. Furthermore, he actually makes efforts to hide the aspects of her that would be regarded as sexual, such as not adding form to her breasts and having that hand hide her genitals. It was fully left to he viewer to know what she was; a mistress. She was’t made a Venus, she was a real woman, and that is what scared audiences so much about this portrayal of how we view art.
Manet included many aspects of modern life, of his time, into this painting. A great example of this is Olympia’s servant in this paint. More studies have been found into identity and it is found that her name was Laure. For now, we aren’t aware of her last name or her exact origin, however, it is suspected that she was from either the Caribbean or Africa. It is also known that se lived in the same area as many artists, as Paris was becoming more diverse. She is dressed in contemporary clothing with a head wrap to symbol those origins of either the Caribbean or Africa. These clothes and her movement, expression and form, places her directly in motion. Opposite to Olympia, Laure is actively apart of life. This distinction adds to the idea of Olympia being a statue for the male gaze, the stand in for the Venus’ throughout art history, and Laure adding to the elements that places this painting so uncomfortably close to viewers daily lives. (Laure is in several of Manet’s work and I will most definitely do additional research on her for a later post)
Throughout art history, people have been given the shield of morality and paintings supposedly depicting womanly virtues to hide the truthfulness of their gaze towards them. This painting gazes back. Men of Manet’s time often had mistresses, fashion in Paris often catered to these woman as they were the ones able to afford such comforts through the gifts of their lovers, many were aware of this side of life and yet none wished to speak of it. This painting was rejected by the academy and torn by the critics of his time. No man or wife wished to be confronted with the shame of this reality, and once they were, the bashed it as a shameful painting of a prostitute. It is this, the many things this painting had accomplished to critic not just in Manet’s time but throughout art history, that makes this painting so truly important. For it is often those things in society that we most wish to hide in shame that need exposing, and who better to expose the misuse of beauty then an artist?
Sources/Video recommendations
https://youtu.be/nFhgy9mkNRo
https://youtu.be/c5iQlPRpfss
https://youtu.be/ycriVxIgMxA
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