Yi Zhong

Research Essay

Ways of Seeing

Christopher Craig

04.29.2019

Manet: The Audience’s First Enemy

On May 15th, 1863, in the Palace of Industry of Paris, thousands of people gathered to see one

painting that was hung as a selected work for Salon des Refusés, Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe. However, they

were not there to appreciate it, they were there to mock it, to indict it, for the painting portrayed the most

vulgar and outrageous scene most of them had ever seen. Two women in nude, probably prostitutes, are

seen along with two well-dressed young gentlemen in the woods. The painting’s huge contrast and sexual

indication caused huge disturbance to the viewers, and this painting would actually mark the emergence of

one of the most influential artists in 19th century, Édouard Manet.

Since Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe, Manet would continue to cause controversy in the art community in

Paris with more bold works like Olympia, and this is also what contemporary people would most likely to

label him with: a painter who could put controversial contents onto his finest works. In 2009, BBC

produced a documentary on Manet mainly around this label, crowning him “the man who invented modern

art”.

However, is it just the content itself that carries modernity and caused disturbance? Does Manet’s

greatness simply end here?

So what is modernity in the first place? Or to be more specific, what are the traits of modern art that

are presented in Manet’s works?

In terms of art in its visual sense, modern art breaks old rules of capturing what human eyes see,
specifically, for example, form (cubism), color (fauvism) and light (impressionism), etc. In addition,

modern art commits great involvement into the society and for the first time as art serves to not only

document but also comment on the society and especially the lives of common people with a sharp socio-

psychological insight. These two aspects are relatively apparent and often presented in Manet’s paintings.

Moreover, these innovations of Manet also contribute to his revolutionary significance in the realm of art’s

basic concept, which is, in this case, the relationship between the artwork and the audience.

Before Manet’s time especially since the Renaissance, this relationship had been rather fixed and

common, as the painting and, in most cases, the subject of the painting are always presenting themselves in

the most passive position to the audience who always claims the full initiative power of looking and

obtaining knowledge or pleasure from them. Accordingly, and also considering that it is a modern topic,

the argument concerning this relationship will be elaborated based on the theoretical context established by

Foucault, which emphasizes and unfolds from the close relationship between knowledge and power.

According to Foucault, “in the premodern period, the exercise of power was itself typically highly

visible (military presence in towns, public executions)(and royal portraits!), while those who were the

objects of knowledge remained obscure. But in the modern age the exercise of power is typically invisible,

but it controls its objects by making them highly visible”(Gutting 86).

In the essay “The Oppositional Gaze”, the author Bell Hooks explores this relationship and formally

applies it to the relationship between the looker and the looked. The act of looking is thus interpreted as

having political meanings, with the looker in the dominant position since he or she claims the superiority

of knowledge over the looked. Knowledge leads to power (Hooks 247).

In Manet’s paintings and especially portraits, the painter is able to employ various technical and

rhetorical methods to, on the one hand, undermine the superiority of the looker and, on the other hand,
strengthen the authority of the looked in the measure of knowledge, thus potentially reverse the political

relationship between the artwork and the audience. In fact, this effort takes place everywhere in the

painting.

I. The Subject

In 19th century, the vocation as an artist was already very different from the past. Religious and royal

patronage, which was once the main source of income and also the determinant of content for artists, had

been reduced to only a small part in the market. The general public had developed a certain extent of

appreciation to art, and were often willing to open their wallet for beauty. The expansion of audience base

meant that artists now had more creative freedom and control over their own works. Their models or sitters

were often no longer the patrons, instead, they were more like employees now, controlled by the artists

who could now paint for art’s sake, for their own sake. Fortunately, Manet was one of them, and he

explored this privilege to a great extent. In Nicholas Mirzoeff’s book “How to See the World”, the author

once introduces the term “flâneurs” to describe the type of people in Paris who are used to being the

audience of the city. Manet, again, was one of them as well (Mirzoeff 166). Moreover, he, along with his

friend Baudelaire, was a direct witness of the transformation of Paris in the 1850s in its appearance, culture

as well as demographics. As a flâneur, Manet could see it, and as a painter, Manet could express it with his

portraits, which bring us to the first significant change from traditional paintings. The subject, or the sitter,

of Manet’s painting usually does not possess a real and specific identity in real life. In the past, painters

either portrayed religious figures or their patrons who always had their names in the title of the painting so

that when people saw the portraits they will directly link the figure in the painting to a specific person in

either mythology or real life. Consequently, the artist is usually requested to showcase the patron’s
character. To achieve this, the artist needs to not only make the figure showcases itself as the person

pleases, but also make sure that what the figure showcases can be applied by the audience to conclude the

person’s general character. For example, in a royal portrait, the sitter is likely to transmit a sense of dignity

that could represent his or her entire life as an august royal member. All in all, the ultimate purpose of

those portraits is to immortalize the subject to the greatest extent. Manet’s subjects, however, though often

based on actual models, usually do not represent actual figures in real life, since he was not asked to do so

as his precursors. What he pays attention to instead is the temporal or almost instantaneous emotions

expressed by the figures which are not necessarily specific people in real life, but the representations of

certain groups or communities of people, the epitomes of certain Parisians based on what Manet had seen

as a flâneur in Paris all along. And those emotions could not represent the figure’s character, for sure, but

they often exhibit profound strength in addressing social and psychological issues that could apply to

broader perspective rather than individuals. The connection between art and reality on which valid

knowledge relies has been greatly enriched and complicated, and is thus covered in mist. In other words,

Manet’s paintings exhibit great possession of information as well as formidable obstacles against the

audience to obtain the it.

II. The Ambient

Before Manet’s time, the content in a portrait usually corresponded to its genre very well. That is to

say, the painting will focus entirely on the sitter, and to emphasize it even more, it often contained a dark

and plain background which presented in sharp contrast to the dramatic lighting and the sitters themselves

as if the whole scene was stage, and indeed it was staged. This style was popularized after the Renaissance

and utilized to the extreme extent by masters like Caravaggio and Rembrandt. When the audience look at

those “staged” paintings, there is always a huge disparity of information between the world in the painting
and the world of the audience, who are always aware of their ambient while could not and do not need to

notice much in the framed world. In sharp contrast, Manet usually places his figures in an actual ambience

that is interactive and could even contribute to the theme of the work. What the audience need to deal with

now is not a figure anymore. Instead, it is a scene taken from a life that is almost as rich as the real one

with the figure still being the main focus. A painting becomes more, and at least at the same level of reality

in terms of possession of information, and thus knowledge.

III. The Techniques: Farewell to Naturalism

Nowadays it is fairly common for people to categorize Manet along with Monet, Degas and Cezanne

as “the impressionists”, although Manet himself always drew a clear line between him and his

impressionistic friends. However, the reasons behind this controversial categorization are actually quite

abundant. It is apparent that Manet’s style has derailed from the once widely-acclaimed naturalism style

that fully developed during the Renaissance. His forms are more abstract, plain and fragmented; his colors

are more vibrant and sometimes even too rich; his lighting is straightforward and weird. And apart from

their still debatable influence on impressionism, these technical rebellions also add to Manet’s arsenal to

challenge the audience.

To capture the world on canvas as it is, or in other words, as what Renaissance artists thought it

should be, is no longer the goal for artists like Manet. The way of capturing the world has for them become

a personal and rhetorical decision. While, as mentioned before, Manet has added enough ambience to

enrich the framed world in content, his no longer naturalistic technique, on the other hand, creates a big

disparity between the painted world constituted by oil and paint and the “ideal, perfect world” which the

audience can derive from its materialistic nature. In other words, his depiction of the “painted world” is

just realistic enough to remind the audience of the real one, but the resemblance has been limited to the
extent that challenges and disturbs the audience’s experience of appreciation. Again, just like what those

unidentifiable figures mentioned in previous sections, Manet’s revolutionary techniques show the audience

with a world full of information that cannot be obtained to undermine their political superiority.

IV. The Gaze

Manet adores the gaze. On the website Edouard Manet: Paintings, Biography, and Quotes, 53

paintings are selected as Manet’s most renowned works, and as many as 33 of them contain at least one

figure who directly looks towards the audience. The direct gaze to the audience did happen in early

paintings, but mostly in royal portraits and portraits of women, and those gazes usually convey a clear

message which serves to either inform (royal portraits) or to please (portraits of women) the audience. For

Manet, however, those gazes should serve the paintings themselves.

In fact, the rhetorical efforts mentioned previously, from the innovative choice of subject to the

enrichment of the ambient to the stylish techniques, would all culminate to Manet’s gazes, which would

give the forever superior audience the most devastating below.

While in earlier cases the gaze usually coordinates with the overall facial expression from the figure

and the context of the painting, in Manet’s painting, the figure’s eyes become the only indication of his or

more often her mood, which, along with the abstracted style, made itself enigmatic. Adding on to that,

Manet’s tendency to depict socio-psychological issues lead to the fact that most of the enigmatic mood is

covered with a mist of melancholy and vulnerability. Consequently, the gaze bears a sense of

condemnation and directs it to the now looked, the audience, and to make it more interesting, this is a one-

way channel of communication, thanks to Manet’s unique technique. There is a old Chinese saying about

painting that goes: “Giving it vivid eyes, you will make the dragon alive.” The eyes are always regarded

crucial when depicting figures, especially those with a direct gaze at the audience, for the reflection in
them becomes the vital element that connects the two persons on the opposite side of the canvas. In most

cases, the eyes are the only place where the audience can expect to find their own presence in the painting,

and this awareness of one’s own presence means the possibility of and encourages communication. In

traditional portraits, artists would fully exhibit their mastery over painting the eyes of the figure, making it

as vivid as possible and even adding the essential “glow” to the pupil, so that their audience can receive the

sense of interaction even from the other side of the canvas. However, in Manet’s rather abstracted and plain

portraits, the eyes are highly simplified, not to mention having any “glow”. The brushstrokes on the eyes

are usually only enough to indicate the direction of the gaze, and the rest is just an abyss of darkness. As a

result, when looking at Manet’s portraits, the audience find themselves at no place in the painting, and are

thus automatically derived from the ability or right to communicate, to express and, in most cases of

appreciating Manet’s portraits, to plead for themselves.

The artwork becomes the prosecutor with the full right of speech and a whole world of evidence in

hand, while the audience becomes the defendant that neither knows anything about that world nor even has

the chance to speak.

There are also some cases, one might argue, in which the audience do not necessarily find themselves

guilty in front of the gaze, that it feels like the gaze either is not directly to the audience or carries different

emotions other than melancholy or complaint. For example, as Foucault himself argues, in La Serveuse de

Bocks, Manet once again manipulates and distorts the perspectives so that the figures feel exceptionally

close to the audience, while the gaze from the main female figure directs farther away and expresses a

sense of unexpected amazement or perhaps confusion (Foucault 27). In this case, the painting build its

superiority of knowledge in another way. The women is not looking at the audience, instead, the painting

indicates that she sees something behind the audience, something not only in the same space with the
audience, but also behind them, somewhere the audience cannot see. This indication completely breaks the

boundary between the figure and the audience and helps establish for the painting a view even larger than

the audience’s, which again results in the dominant position of the looker.

Epilogue:

For probably the first time in the history of art, an artist dared to employ almost every single element,

actual or rhetorical, to challenge, instead of please the audience. Manet, as an artist, had far more in mind

than art itself, which is in a sense indeed the essence of art, for art has always been connected to all aspects

of human civilization. When we think of Manet as “the father of modern art”, we should be aware of the

fact that instead of being completely ahead of his time, Manet’s position as a pioneer in the development of

art was greatly influenced by the ever-changing demographics and culture of the time.

Nowadays, artists who think highly of themselves all want to “make art for art’s sake”, so that their

works might make a name in history, while they forget that art is always about relativity instead of

isolation. Manet’s success might be misinterpreted by them as to ignore the audience or underestimate the

audience, while the reality is quite the contrary, because Manet, whose painting is armed with every

element to strike the audience, is exactly the artist who always pays the most attention to the audience, who

makes the audience the real subject of his creation. The concept of audience was born as soon as there was

art, and the bond between them has been strong ever since. Nowadays, when everyone is complaining that

capitalism is kidnapping and corrupting the audience, artists should be the last people to turn away from

them. Instead of creating something that only pleases the creator’s ego, artists can try putting the audience

at the center of their rhetorical considerations as Manet did when the neoclassical were dominating the

salon, and try to challenge or even transform the audience, because they are where revolutions really take
place.

Works Cited

Foucault, Michel, et al. La Peinture De Manet. Editions Du Seuil, 2004.

Hooks, Bell. Reading Images, 2001, pp. 123

Mirzoeff, Nicholas. How to See the World: an Introduction to Images, from Self-Portraits to Selfies, Maps
to Movies, and More. Basic Books, 2016.

GUTTING, GARY. FOUCAULT: a Very Short Introduction. OXFORD UNIV PRESS, 2019.