Showing posts with label Victorine Meurent. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Victorine Meurent. Show all posts

Clothed men and naked women...

...is a classic (some might argue puerile) male erotic fantasy.Three of my favourites...

Edouard Manet,  Le déjeuner sur l'herbe ("Luncheon on the Grass"), 1862-63, Musee d'Orsay, Paris

Manet's masterpiece, the female figure in the foreground a combination of Victorine Meurent's face and Manet's wife Suzanne Leenhoff's body. But it is not the nudity that interests us here, but Manet's genius, not only as a painter, but in his capacity in his great works to engage and involve the audience. Emile Zola said "Painters, especially Édouard Manet, who is an analytic painter, do not have this preoccupation with the subject which torments the crowd above all; the subject, for them, is merely a pretext to paint, while for the crowd, the subject alone exists."

Julian Wasser, Marcel Duchamp and Eve Babitz at his retrospective at the Pasadena Museum of Art, 1963, Photograph

Well, we can allow the sublime Marcel his little jokes as he sits in front of The Large Glass contemplating his next move. After all, he considered most of his art an "amusement". For an analysis of his chess ability see Jennifer Shahade, who is a two time US chess champion. Jennifer has also turned the tables on Duchamp with her own video of her playing a naked male opponent while commenting on aspects of Duchamp's game. She said of the video "I guess being naked, cold and in a doomed chess position took away some of his natural cheer." The video can be found on the same page...

Josef Breitenbach, Dr. Riegler and J. Greno, Munich, 1933, Photograph

Arguably one of the most mysterious and therefore erotic photographs ever taken. All we know about it is that Riegler was Breitenbach's best friend and a journalist. There are several other pics from the same session if you feel like searching. What, you're leaving already?

Victorine Meurent

Victorine-Louise Meurent, c.1865, from the collection of Edouard Manet

I came across this recently on the Wikipedia entry for Victorine, who (as you know I am sure) was the model for Edouard Manet's Olympia and Le déjeuner sur l'herbe. Olympia remains one of my all time favourite works of art. I had written a much earlier post on this painting called "Its odd, I always thought I made men uneasy", and had inadvertently included a photo of Mme Ernestine Nadar...thankfully a reader was quick to point out the error. Nice to know someone's looking! The above picture was taken around the same time that Olympia created a scandal when first shown in Paris...

"It's odd, I always thought I made men uneasy"

The first in a series on masterpieces of erotic art...

Edouard Manet, Olympia, 1863, Oil on canvas, Musee d'Orsay, Paris

The title of this post is a quote from Victorine Meurent, the model for Edouard Manet's Olympia...

She stares at me. I stare back, embarrassed to take my eyes away from hers for fear of being seen as a voyeur. But I cannot ignore the petite, porcelain, perfect figure. The cat is clearly not impressed by my presence. The maid holds flowers. Are they a gift from me? Will they be accepted, or discarded?


She looks at me with detachment and a slight bemusement. Manet has made me confront my own sexuality by inviting me to participate in this picture. This woman is not for sale...I can admire but not touch. Not only a superb exercise in painting (the form in the figure achieved with true economy of tone), but an exercise in moral standards and the role of women in society, just as relevant today as it was in the nineteenth century. This is what makes Olympia erotic, not the fact that it is a nude...I feel uneasy.

For the Victorine Meurent story I recommend Alias Olympia by Eunice Lipton, Thames & Hudson, London, 1992.