The French

[Cyrus]

Three Russian Dancers
Edgar Degas
1895
Nationalmuseum, Stockholm

[Cyrus]

The Dancers
Edgar Degas
1899
Museum of Art, Toledo, Ohio

[Cyrus]

Two Dancers in Blu
Edgar Degas
1899
Musée d'Orsay, Paris

[Cyrus]

Dancers in Pink
Edgar Degas
1876
Hillstead Museum, Farmington, CT, U.S.

[Rick Nebiolo]

Thanks Cyrus. I should have posted a link but was just too tired. Or maybe I suspect I know so little about art that I'd stumble and post something silly without knowing it [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img].

~ Rick

[scalf]

[img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img] [img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img]..

rick;

you are an arteeest.

gl

[img]/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img] [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img] [img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img] [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[ACPlayer]

Did they meet at the

[andyfox]

My favorite Manet painting and undoubtedly his masterpiece.

We are met by a barmaid, named Suzon, whose counter is arrayed with one of the most scintillating still lifes in nineteenth-century art. Painted with broad brushstrokes in vibrant colors are aperitif, champagne, and cordial bottles, aligned with fruit, crystal, and flowers as an unmatched foretaste of the consumable pleasures offered in a major estalbishment for entertaining the rich and aspriring rich. Who knows whether the barmaid herself, with her wooden posture and gaze which almost avoids the viewer's, might be an available commodity herself? Or whether Manet, who signed his name on one of hte cordial bottles, was consciously comparing his painting to one (and hence himself to the barmaid as well? Waitressing was at the time a suspicious profession, almost like that of artist's model; and, as in many of Manet's works, things are not always as they appear, especially in establishments where access was based on looks and money rather than on clearly defined social origins.

Typical of the ambiguities in Manet' art, the mirror behind the barmaid both deepends and flattens the space. It is the medium through which we witness the vast cabaret hall filled with light, smoke, acrobatic spectacle above the stage, and the fashionably dressed crowd. Many of Manet's contemporaries commented on the mirror, which is also the crux of many recent theories about the painting (including the suggestion by feminists that the barmaid herself is looking in a mirror, hence the viewer is construed as female), for one could hardly fail to notice how its reflection both encompasses a vast society and defies physical possibility. Yet the psychological effects of its optical anomaly are fully consistent with Manet's sensibility as an artist.

Even though the barmaid does not look directly at the viewer of the painting, she so strongly centers the composition that there is a clear sense that the viewer's position should be directly in front of her. At the same time, the mirror reflects figures and the objects on the counter as if the viewer were standing considerably to the right. Only from such a position could one see the reflection of the barmaid's back and of the customer she is serving (the viewer himself?).

Manet thus deliberately placed the reflection in tension with normal viewing. It might almost be said that A Bar at the Folies-Bergere has presented the aesthetic of the detached viewer's gaze as a surgical operation, in which the eye has been removed (figuatively speaking) from its location in the body and placed further to the right. The detached eye, so-to-speak, concentrates us entirely on signs of artifice, such as the artist's compositional counterpoint of alternating forms and rhythmic repetition, his treatment of surface--especially textural where the chandeliers are reflected in the mirror--or the still-life objects of consumption, which ultimately include the painting itself. The painting's unstable "reflection" of this space embodies the social ambiguity of its world. Both produce a sharpneing of attentiveness and self-consciuosness. Manet had often flaunted the artist's staging of realiaty, and he had certainly raised questions of social phychology through indefinable relationships he could create between two figures--one of them now the viewer. In none of his other paintings, however, have both the foundations of reality and social identity together become so problematic as in this one.

There. Having reached 10,000 posts, I'm now trying for a 10,000 word post.

[vulturesrow]

Im not a big art guy other than what little I learned about in high school humanities. Probably one of the few disadvantages of growing up poor in the rural south and then going to a technical college. [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img] That being said, I really like all the paintings that were posted here. My thanks to all involved in the discussion for exposing me to these wonderful pieces.

[ACPlayer]

Come visit NY and we can do a trip through some of the great museums here. The impressionist and post-impressionist period are my favorite -- probably because I did a couple of courses in that era.