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Tag Archives: Manet

Manet, “Japonisme” and Modernism

08 Monday Jul 2013

Posted by michelinewalker in Art, Japonism

≈ 10 Comments

Tags

Academic art, Édouard Manet, Hokusai, James Abbott McNeill Whistler, Japonism, Le déjeuner sur l'herbe, Manet, Paris, Salon, William-Adolphe Bouguereau

640px-Hokusai_portraitKatsushika Hokusai, in an 1839 self-portrait (Photo credit: Hokusai, Wikipedia)

As of Édouard Manet’s “modernity,” there occurred a gradual decline of academic art. The nude women of Déjeuner sur l’herbe (Luncheon on the Grass) did not quite belong. Symbolism had therefore entered the visual arts. At first glance, this painting seemed a “realist” work, consistent with Gustave Courbet‘s art, but it wasn’t. The academicists, Alexandre Cabanel and William-Adolphe Bouguereau, who excluded it from the Salon of 1863, the regular exhibition of Paris’ École des Beaux-Arts, must have sensed what Victor Hugo had sensed when he first read Baudelaire’s Fleurs du mal, (The Flowers of Evil.) Hugo called Baudelaire’s collection of poems a ‘nouveau frisson’ (a new shudder, a new thrill)[i] in literature. (See Les Fleurs du mal [The Flowers of Evil], Wikipedia.)

James Abbott McNeill Whistler‘s “Symphony in White, No. 1: The White Girl ” was also rejected by academicists. Whistler was introducing impressionism and Japonism, which, Whistler’s case, would be called the Anglo-Japanese style. After leaving the United States, Whistler spent some time in France, but soon settled in England.

Both Manet’s Déjeuner sur l’herbe and Whistler’s Symphony in White were “different,” so both were shown at the 1863 Salon des Refusés.[ii]  Émile Zola stated that “[b] eauty [was] no longer an absolute, a preposterous universal standard,”[iii] and, in 1886, he published L’Œuvre (The Masterpiece), a novel inspired by the rejection of Manet’s “Masterpiece.” That same year, Jean Moréas published the Symbolist Manifesto.

Our Japanese artists are:

  • Kitagawa Utamaro (c. 1753 – 31 October 1806),
  • Katsushika Hokusai (c. 31 October 1760 – 10 May 1849)  and
  • Utagawa Hiroshige (1797 – 12 October 1858).

398px-23_-_The_Sea_off_Satta

394px-03_-_Sukiyagahsi

View of Mount Fuji from Satta Point in the Suruga Bay, published posthumously (1859)

Sukiyagahsi in the Eastern Capital, from “Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji” Utagawa Hiroshige, (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
 
(Please click on the images to enlarge them.)
 

Modernisme

Manet’s inclusion in a painting such as the deceitfully realist Déjeuner sur l’herbe of elements that did not seem to belong and did not belong, and Japonisme contributed to the ultimate acceptance of different styles, a multitude of “isms.” How else could Art Nouveau, Post-Impressionism (Van Gogh),[iv] Cubism (Picasso), Intimism,  (Modernism  [EN]), etc.have emerged? The unexpectedly enigmatic art of Manet and Japonism ushered in the degree of acceptance that characterizes modernism. In fact, Japonism was a tidal wave.

By the same token, there occurred an equally unexpected integration of various arts and crafts: musical, visual, etc. There was collaboration between stage decorators, composers, literary figures and various “artists.” Sergei Diaghilev‘s Ballets Russes employed major artists, including Pablo Picasso. Russian painter Léon Bakst was the Ballets Russes’ stage- and costume designer. Sergei Diaghilev also employed soon-to-be major composers: Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Igor Stravinsky, etc. (For lists of artists and musicians who worked for Diaghilev, see Ballets Russes, Wikipedia.)

In other words, although there had to be exceptions, beginning with Manet and Japonisme, the world of art broadened. Modernism, starting with Impressionism, inaugurated greater diversity. A list may be useful.

  • Æstheticism (British art for art’s sake): James Abbott McNeill Whistler, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, etc.;
  • artwork that is precise rather than “impressionistic” and “suggestive,” i.e. the art of members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood: Edward Burne-Jones, William Hunt, John Everett Millais, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, John William Waterhouse, etc.;
  • decorative arts, i.e. the Arts and Crafts movement: William Morris, John Ruskin, etc.;
  • Art Nouveau, curvy and sensual, whose most acclaimed representative is Czech artist Alphonse Mucha, etc.;
  • illustrators: Anne Anderson, Aubrey Beardsley, Ivan Bilibin, Randolph Caldecott, Walter Crane, Edmund Dulac, Kate Greenaway, Beatrix Potter, Arthur Rackham, John Tenniel, etc.;
  • posters, many of which reflect Japonisme or Orientalisme, in general, i.e. Toulouse-Lautrec, Théophile Steinlen, etc.;
  • Japonisme (Toulouse-Lautrec, Mary Cassatt)
  • interior decoration: La Maison Jansen, a Paris-based decorative office, founded in 1880 by Dutch-born Jean-Henri Jansen, Tiffany, design;
  • Post-Impressionism and other “isms.”

In other words, as I wrote at the beginning of this post, rule-governed academic art simply faded out. But there’s more…

“Views,” or the Japanese Hours

As well, some Japanese prints depicted “hours” of the day. In traditional Japan, hours had been associated with an animal. There were twelve hours: the Rat, the Ox, the Tiger, the Hare, the Dragon, the Serpent, the Horse, the Sheep, the Monkey, the Rooster, the Dog and the Boar. (See Horloge japonaise traditionnelle, Wikipedia.) These prints reminded me of Benedict’s Canonical Hours. “Hours,” or equivalent observances, existed before Western monasticism. They in fact still exist, not only in Western culture, but also in other cultures and religions, such as Buddhism, Hinduism, and Janeism. (See Monasticism, Wikipedia.)

As for “Views” or “Famous Places” (meisho), they sometimes resemble genre art, or art portraying persons going about their daily activities. Hokusai‘s Thirty-six Views of Mount Fugi and Hiroshige‘s One Hundred Famous Views of Edo, both meisho (“famous places”) pieces, bring to mind the miniatures of Jean de France’s Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry, illuminated by the Limbourg brothers and showing the labours of the months. Hiroshige’s series One Hundred Famous Views of Edo is divided into seasons, which takes us back to the calendar, no banal invention.

RELATED POSTS

  • Canonical Hours or the Divine Office
  • Books of Hours, a Rich Legacy
  • Les Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry
  • The Fitzwilliam Book of Hours: comments, palimpsests
 
HOKUSA~1
 

Netsuke-Workshop-large

Sarumaru Dayu, from the ‘Hyakunin Isshu Ubaga Etoki’
A Netsuke Worshop, from the ‘Hyakunin Isshu Ubaga Etoki’
Katsushika Hokusai
(Photo credit: Hokusai Wikipedia and Hokusai, The Complete Works)
(Please click on the images to enlarge them.)

_________________________

[i] Wikipedia (Manet) contains a fuller commentary.

[ii] “Frissonner” means to shiver.

[iii] There were other Salons des Refusés (1874, 1875, and 1886) but it did not become an annual exhibition. The 1863 Salon des refusés was decreed by Napoléon III. (See Salon des Refusés, Wikipedia)

[iv] According to Wikipedia, the “term [Post-Impressionism] was coined by British artist and art critic Roger Fry, in 1910, to describe the development of French art since Manet.”

Manet’s “Déjeuner sur l’herbe” (Luncheon on the Grass), 1863
(Photo credit: Déjeuner sur l’herbe, Wikipedia)
(Please click on the image to enlarge it.)
 758PX-~1 
   
© Micheline Walker
8 July 2013
WordPress
 
Related articles
  • Katsushika Hokusai: Beauty (michelinewalker.com)
  • Édouard Manet’s Modernity (michelinewalker.com)
  • Édouard Manet: Enigmas (michelinewalker.com)
  • Utamaro’s Women & Japonisme (michelinewalker.com)
  • Utagawa Hiroshige: a “Human Touch” (michelinewalker.com)
  • William Merritt Chase: Japonisme in America (michelinewalker.com)

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Édouard Manet’s Modernity

23 Sunday Jun 2013

Posted by michelinewalker in Art

≈ 16 Comments

Tags

Arthur Rimbaud, Édouard Manet, Charles Baudelaire, cocotte, Gustave Courbet, Jean Moréas, Le déjeuner sur l'herbe, Manet, Modernity, Symbolist Manifesto

La Pèche (Fishing), by Édouard Manet, 1863

La Pêche (Photo credit: Wikimedia)

Enigmas

Related Post: Édouard Manet: Enigmas.

A few days ago, I wrote a post on Édouard Manet‘s Déjeuner sur l’herbe and pointed out that Luncheon on the Grass and Olympia (painted in 1863 and exhibited at the 1865 Paris Salon), a sister painting, were enigmatic works of art.  Beginning with Manet, art historians tend to look upon a realist or seemingly realist work of art as transitional.  The foremost among realist painters was Gustave Courbet (10 June 1819 – 31 December 1877).  Now, these transitional works of art take us from Realism to Impressionism, alighting briefly on the Barbizon “plein air” school, but other influences are possible.  Such may be the case with Manet.

Literature as a Possible Key to the Enigmas

Literature may offer insights into Manet’s enigmatic paintings.  Manet was a friend or acquaintance of writers and poets associated with French Symbolism.[i]  Where writers are concerned, Manet knew Charles Baudelaire, Arthur Rimbaud, Stéphane Mallarmé (the most esoteric and hermetic among these writers), Paul Valéry and others.

Olympia, by Édouard Manet, 1863

Olympia, by Édouard Manet, 1863

(Photo credit: Wikipaintings)

The Symbolist Manifesto

In the Symbolist Manifesto, written, in French, by Jean Moréas (15 April 1856 – 30 April 1910), born Ioannis A. Papadiamantopoulos, in Greece, and published in 1886, symbolism is described as follows:

“In this art, scenes from nature, human activities, and all other real world phenomena will not be described for their own sake; here, they are perceptible surfaces created to represent their esoteric affinities with the primordial Ideals.”
In a nutshell, ‘to depict not the thing but the effect it produces.'”
See Symbolism (arts), Wikipedia. 
 
“Ainsi, dans cet art, les tableaux de la nature, les actions des humains, tous les phénomènes concrets ne sauraient se manifester eux-mêmes ; ce sont là des apparences sensibles destinées à représenter leurs affinités ésotériques avec des Idées primordiales, …”
Manifeste des symbolistes, Le Figaro, Supplément littéraire, p. 1-2, Saturday, 18 September 1886.
 

A Note on Charles Baudelaire

The Symbolist Manifesto was published later than Manet’s epochal Déjeuner sur l’herbe and Olympia (1862-1865).  However, Charles Baudelaire’s Fleurs du mal (Gutenberg EBook # 6099 [FR]), a major literary turning-point, was published in 1857 and is a symbolist and modernist collection of poems.  In « Correspondances »,  Baudelaire states that man passes through “forests of symbols” (des forêts de symboles) and he makes associations, which he calls correspondances, that sometimes jar.  Yet, although they do not seem to fit or belong, they may be and are very poetical:

Il est des parfums frais comme des chairs d’enfants,
Doux comme les hautbois, verts comme les prairies,
– Et d’autres, corrompus, riches et triomphants, …
 
(There are perfumes that are fresh like children’s flesh,
sweet like oboes, green like meadows
– And others, corrupt, rich, and triumphant, … )[ii]
  

Modernity

In short, in Déjeuner sur l’herbe, what one sees may be allusive, which would link Manet to symbolism.  The naked ladies of Manet’s Déjeuner sur l’herbe may be a reference, as may the gentlemen.  They may in fact be remembrances, but whatever they are, they do not truly belong.  Nor does Olympia. The public did not like Olympia, but it may simply be that instead of painting a Titian Danaë, or Titian’s Venus of Urbino, which Olympia resembles, Manet showed a demi-mondaine [FR], a modern high-class prostitute or cocotte.  This was shocking and a rather peculiar form of modernity.

As for A Bar at the Folies-Bergère, just where is the man?  Moreover, is the second woman a reflection of the woman tending the bar?  Manet was a trained artist and knew perspective.  Therefore, when and if he encroached on the rules of perspective, he did so consciously.  At any rate, something jars.

Not all of Manet’s paintings are as evocative as Déjeuner sur l’herbe, Olympia, A Bar at the Folies-Bergère or La Pêche, featured above, but these four paintings feature an uncanny element, such as the couple shown at the bottom right of La Pêche (Fishing).  As their clothes indicate, these persons lived in another age.  They are Baudelaire’s Vie antérieure (past life).

So it would appear that Manet depicted the ills of modernity and did so in his own modernist manner.  He discreetly juxtaposed elements that do not seem related and some of which are symbols.  I am using the word “discreetly” because, at first glance, with the possible exception of Olympia, one is unlikely to notice Manet has imported extraneous elements into these paintings.  This could be a characteristic of Manet’s modernity.     

Conclusion

Let me close, by repeating that the enigmatic Manet may have been influenced by French symbolism.  In Déjeuner sur l’herbe, Olympia, A Bar at the Folies-Bergère and La Pêche, shown at the top of this post, something does jar.  These paintings may be related to the symbolist movement in French literature, but they may also constitute an early form of modernity that expresses resistance to modernity, a resistance conveyed by the inclusion of elements that do not quite fit: “esoteric affinities” (Symbolist Manifesto, quoted above).

According to the Encyclopædia Britannica,

Manet also influenced the path of much 19th- and 20th-century art through his choice of subject matter. His focus on modern, urban subjects—which he presented in a straightforward, almost detached manner—distinguished him still more from the standards of the Salon, which generally favoured narrative and avoided the gritty realities of everyday life. Manet’s daring, unflinching approach to his painting and to the art world assured both him and his work a pivotal place in the history of modern art.[iii]

A Boy with a Dog, Édouard Manet, 1861

A Boy with a Dog, by Édouard Manet, 1861

(Photo credit: Wikipaintings)

___________________________________

[i] Symbolism is not confined to literature, French literature in particular.  As a movement, it includes writers and artists living in several different countries. (See Symbolism (arts), Wikipedia.)

[ii] See Symbolism (arts), in Wikipedia.  To read a translation of the complete poem, click on Correspondences.

[iii] “Edouard Manet”. Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online.
Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2013. Web. 22 Jun. 2013

Francis Poulenc (7 January 1899 – 30 January 1963)
“Trois Novelettes”
Gabriel Tacchino, (b. 1934) piano
art: La Place Valhubert, 1875, by Armand Guillaumin (February 16, 1841 – June 26, 1927) (Photo credit: Armand Guillaumin, Wikipedia) 
 
   
Peonies in a Vase, by Édouard Manet, 1864

Peonies in a Vase, by Édouard Manet, 1864

© Micheline Walker
22 June 2013
WordPress
 
(Photo credit: Wikipaintings)
(Please click on the image to enlarge it.)
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

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