MANET: MASTER OF THE MODERN IDIOM
Hilary Hope Guise, professor of art history, Florida State University
Monday 27–Wednesday 29 January 3.00 pm COURSE FEES R330; Staff and students R165
Édouard Manet was born in Paris in 1832. He was in his late twenties when the group of ‘new painters’ were meeting in the Café Guerbois in Montmartre. Manet’s work represents a crucial turning point between the realism of Gustave Courbet and the ‘new painters’. His extremely expressive and accurate painting technique influenced the young Impressionists, though he did not consider himself one of them.
Manet’s most scandalous year was in 1863 when he made two paintings which captured the loose morality of France and of Paris. These two works led to him to become the undisputed leader of the avant-garde, and a pariah at the École des Beaux Arts. Both works, ‘Déjeuner sur l’herbe’ and ‘Olympia’, reference the great Renaissance works of Giorgione and Titian. They were, nevertheless, rejected by the Salon and subsequently exhibited at the Salon de Refusés where they scandalised the Parisian public. His ‘Olympia’ portrayed a working prostitute fully aware that she is stark naked. The brazen nature of the model caused great offence as syphilis was rife in Paris at the time.
Manet responded to the fast-moving modern world with its bars, gardens, lakes and pleasure boats. Nevertheless a deeper side of him is revealed in his moving works of 1864 and 1865 on the theme of death – expressed most vividly during his flight to Spain following hostile criticism to his two works of 1863.
Lecture titles
- Manet: master of the modern idiom
- Manet flees to Spain: love, death and politics
- Manet at Argenteuil: boating, flirting and painting
TO BOOK: https://www.webtickets.co.za/v2/performance.aspx?itemid=1554706071