ÉDOUARD MANET Part Two The painter of Parisian modernité, Édouard Manet, abandoned his early strategy of commenting on past masterpieces but continued his quest to update and modernize traditional genres in Salon painting. A transitional painter, Manet pointed to way...
ÉDOUARD MANET AND “THE (FEMALE) NUDE” Unlike his predecessor, Gustave Courbet who carefully directed the critical discourse around his art, Édouard Manet was far more taciturn. When he spoke, it was in fragments, causal remarks, rarely buttressed by explanations...
ÉDOUARD MANET AND THE SALON Part One Like the career of Gustave Courbet, the career of Édouard Manet breaks into two segments. As with all aspiring artists, Manet had to make his mark, and he chose to call attention to himself through a series of paintings that...
Art-for-Art’s-Sake in Context In the Salon of 1846, the poet and art critic, Charles Baudelaire argued that average people (in modern clothes) were as heroic as any Roman heroes of ancient times. In the waning days of the July Monarchy, the Greco-Roman legends...
THE PAINTER OF MODERN LIFE Like many writers before and after him, Baudelaire wrote without specific commission, on “spec” as it were. This essay on Constantin Guys, an illustrator for the Illustrated London News, was actually written in 1860 and would not be...