paul

Detail of " Olympia " by Edouard Manet, 1863, in Musée d'Orsay Victorine Meurent is Manet’s most frequent model of his early career.  She shocked audiences as the indifferent courtesan in Olympia (above), exhibited in the Paris Salon of 1864.   A year earlier, Victorine had scandalized Parisians, playing the part of a shameless woman who disrobed during a midday picnic. That was her role in Manet's rev olutionary p ainting, Le d éj e uner sur l ' herbe ( The Luncheon on the Grass-- see on bottom) exhibit ed at the Salon des Refusées for the officially rejected paintings of that year.   She is just the matter-of-fact figur e that Manet wanted, and there is nothing beautiful, sexual or erotic in either image. In both paintings, she is not an individual but the object, the sexual object. Manet also painted Victorine as Young Lady ( also c alled Woman with a Parrot ), in 1866. She looks taller in her long pink gown. There's a magnificent unpeeled ...

Jan Van Eyck, Mary, part of the Deesis composition,  detail of The Ghent Altarpiece in St. Bavo's Cathedral, Ghent, Belgium, c. 1430 photo source: Wikipedia The Monuments Men  is a true story about saving cultural artifacts in war.  George Clooney has done a great job acting and directing this film which has an important message about art, what it means for us and the efforts some would go to save culture. One woman who played a huge part in saving art is shown and Cate Blanchett played that role with depth and finesse.   An all-star cast doesn't guarantee good reviews, but I often disagree with movie reviewers.   Matt Damon, Bill Murray and Jean Dujardin star in the movie, too. Tourists in front of the Ghent Altarpiece in recent times. A film, The Monuments Men, explores its theft and recovery in World War II.  Photo source: daydreamtourist.com The star monument is Jan Van Eyck's The Ghent Altarpiece , an example of one of the earliest oil paintings....

Manet, The Repose , 1870, Rhode Island School of Design.    Berthe Morisot is at rest, but the seascape behind her could symbolize an inner restlessness behind her calm demeanor.  Why hasn't the love story of painters Édouard Manet and Berthe Morisot been told in film?  (Both Manet and Morisot are represented in large numbers at the exhibition, Imp ressionism, Fashion and Modernity , formerly at Musée d' Orsay, but no w at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC and onto the Art Institu te of Chicago this s ummer.  M orisot was the sub ject of a large retrospective at Musée Mar mottan Monet, Paris , last year , and her work , like much Impressionism, is so much better when viewed in real life rather than reproduction.) Manet, a "people person" and painter of people, is the one artist of the past I would wish to meet above all others.  Morisot, one of his muses, is the artist with whom I empathize more than any other.  She loved in a painful way,...