Renoir's La Loge and Morisot's At the Ball

             

               Pierre-August Renoir, La Loge, 1874                                                              Berthe Morisot, At the Ball, 1875

                 (The Courtland Gallery, London)                                                                   (Musee Marmottan, Paris)

In Renoir's La Loge we see a cocotte sitting at the front of the box at the opera in front of a man who is probably her benefactor, her face painted white, lips red, displaying a generous bosom for all to see accentuated with the flowers she wears to display her cleavage to its best advantage.   She is in a garish black and white dress that would have drawn attention to her even from a distance.  Renoir has painted glistening pearls around her neck and white flecks in her eyes to further idealize her for the male viewer.  She is holding a pair of  binoculars; her accessories complete her decorativeness to the man sitting next to her.  She has an unfocused, vapid gaze, a passive looker, aware of being objectified.   The man sitting next to her, on the other hand, is looking out at the audience with his binoculars, not even paying any attention to her.  

Berthe Morisot was probably aware of Renoir's La Loge when she painted At the Ball in 1875 since they were acquainted and she would invite him to the salons she held for her artist friends on Thursdays, at her house in Bougival.  Even though Renoir was of middle class origins while Morisot was from the upper class, their shared passion for art, enabled them to become friends.  

In Morisot's painting we see another woman in an evening gown, wearing flowers and very little makeup.  She is in a dress that is subtle and the flowers are not to draw attention to herself but to symbolize her innocence.  She is a respectable, wealthy female at a ball.  Her sideways, assured, contemplative gaze informs the viewer that she is a thinking woman.  There is nothing in her eyes that tells us what she is thinking but  she has a meditative expression and this is probably a scene out of Berthe Morisot's own experience.  

The literature of Modernity describes the experience of men.  According to Baudelair "... (women are) objects of a keenest admiration and curiosity that the picture of life can offer to its contemplator. She is an idol, stupid perhaps, but dazzling and bewitching...  Everything that adorns woman that serves to show off her beauty is part of herself..."  Griselda Pollock in her essay Modernity and The Spaces of Femininity, has made a grid using Baudelair's theories about the position of women as the object of the flaneur's gaze and their representation by the artists of the time according to their gender.  While male artists had access to ladies as well as fallen women at the theater, park, cafes, folies and brothels, female artists only had access to ladies of fashionable society and  children to be represented either at the theater, park or at the home.  The opera and the ball were two places that were above the grid of respectability making it available to both genders.1 

Like Cassatt, Morisot painted the inner world of the upper class female.  Baudelair's explanation of the stupid, beautiful, adorned woman is visualized in Renoir's La Loge while Morrisot seems to be making a contradictory statement of her own in her painting, At the Ball,by showing for all to see that a woman who is beautiful could also be a thinking woman too.  

1.  Norma Broude and Mary D. Garrard, The Expanding Discourse:  Feminism and Art History, (Westviewpress, 1992,) 255-258

Gustave Caillebotte - Paris Street; Rainy Day

Gustave Caillebotte, Paris Street: Rainy Day, 1877
(The Art Institute of Chicago)

Gustave Caillebotte has always been one of my favorite artists but since he does not have as big a body of work like some of the other Impressionists in the United States, it's not so easy to come across his paintings .  I was really looking forward to seeing one of his most important works, Paris Street;  Rainy Day  at the  Art Institute of Chicago.   Coming face to face with the original work reaffirmed the importance of seeing a work of art in person.  This painting I was so familiar with and studied for my art history classes on many occasions, had the ability to surprise me and take my breath away. I wasn't prepared for it's monumental size - 83 1/2 x 108 3/4" or its dominating presence.  Standing before it, at the entrance of the first gallery of Impressionist paintings, I was transformed to that moment, to that street corner in Paris in 1877.

Caillebotte has captured the transient moment perfectly in this canvas.  He gives the viewer a wide angle view of the modern city with it's inhabitants from all walks of life coexisting within the newly built boulevards of Haussman's Paris.  In the foreground is an upper class couple walking arm in arm, and there are a multitude of other passersby in the background but the sense of disconnect is prevalent in the picture.  All the detached, non-communicative character of the figures occupying the intersection may indicate Caillebotte's disdain for the anonymous and anti-picturesque nature of Haussman's boulevards but also a place with a personal significance, since his family residence that included his studio was just a few blocks away.1  Another typical aspect of Impressionist paintings that is present in Paris Street; Rainy Day - this was probably the artist's own experience.   

Gustave Caillebotte, Le Pont de l'Europe, 1876
(Musee du Petit Palais, Geneva)

Caillebotte was fascinated with the idea of modernity causing a sense of isolation in urban centers and some of his works depict this desolate state of mind very clearly.  Le Pont de l'Europe is another great depiction of this psychological state.  In Paris Street; Rainy Day, the umbrellas seem to reinforce the sense of detachment giving each person their own space.  No one is actually communicating with one another, they all seem to be in their own world. The bourgeois gentleman in the front seems to represent Baudelair's flaneur, the exquisitely turned out, well mannered, gentleman stroller, detached observer.

Unlike most other Impressionists, especially Renoir or Monet, Caillebotte did not represent modernity by ignoring or blurring it but instead giving it a prominent position in his painting.  The gas light in the very middle of his composition dividing the picture plane and the uniformly manufactured umbrellas, as well as the newly constructed, wide boulevards were all products of the industrial innovations of the time period.

Caillebotte's treatment of atmosphere and weather conditions also differs from his Impressionist colleagues.  He has represented the rain by an overcast sky and manipulating different grays to represent the wet cobblestone street. It is not a matter of light reflections and broken brush strokes but highly finished elements in a very deliberately constructed perspective.

Caillebotte was a prolific artist whose style is found to be closer to the school of Realism due to his exacting technique and structured spatial compositions.  He was known for his views of urban Paris as well as interiors with domestic, familial scenes. His interest in photography can be deciphered from the abrupt cropping of some of his compositions and the unusual perspective effects he uses may be due to his interest in Japanese prints.

Gustave Caillebotte was an independently wealthy artist as well as an avid art collector who supported the Impressionists by buying their work and helping to fund their exhibitions.  He left his extensive art collection including some coveted masterpieces to the French government with the stipulation that they exhibit his Impressionist collection as well, which, today constitutes the core of the Musee d'Orsay collection of Impressionist paintings.

I feel Paris Street; Rainy Day is one of the must-see attractions of Chicago.  It is the perfect example of how a great work of art can draw the viewer in, try to understand the time period and contemplate what the artist was trying to get across.

1.  Douglas W. Druick and Gloria Groom, The Age of French Impressionism, Masterpieces from the Art Institute of Chicago, 57

Edgar Degas - In a Cafe (The Absinthe Drinker)

Edgar Degas, In a Cafe (The Absinthe Drinker) 1875-1876
(Musee d'Orsay)

Here is a painting by Edgar Degas, which at first sight, seems to be a portrayal of another aspect of modernity - two individuals, sitting side by side, in a cafe, completely disconnected from one another, not communicating in any way, wallowing in their isolation.  Typical of Impressionist paintings, it looks like a snapshot of a scene anyone might run into on the street, a slice of life.  The subject is one impressionists are very interested in depicting, that of the urban lifestyle lived in the cafes.

The influence of Japanese prints that Degas collected, can be seen in the placement of the  table in the front, at an odd angle that is blocking the viewers way into the picture. The geometric shapes of the tables that lead us into the composition and the placement of the woman almost slightly off center can also be attributed to Japanese prints. The tables are actually geometric shapes that don't have legs with a folded newspaper forming a bridge between the two.

Degas takes on the role of the artist/reporter observing the scene without making any kind of a moral commentary, he even signs his name on the newspaper with the baton, in the front. He gives us the life in the cafe as it is, noting problematic issues of the day along the way.  The drink in front of the woman is known to be absinthe due to its light green color and the water jug sitting on the table next to her.  She looks frazzled, her shoulders stooped, her clothing and hat seem to be in disarray, her feet apart. Degas' use of brown and umber tones adds to her bedraggled appearance. A desolate figure, one of the lost souls who had no life outside of the cafe.  The whole canvas is worked in earth tones with a muted, limited pallet adding to the sense of despair.  Women at cafes and drinking was a big issue of the day and absinthe particularly was frowned upon and later prohibited because of it's hallucinogenic, addicting qualities.  Emile Zola had written a story about a woman who became an alcoholic which horrified the public.  The man leaning on the table completely oblivious to the woman, has a brown drink in a tall footed glass in front of him which was mazagran, a coffee that was drunk to cure a hangover. We can tell it is morning by the light entering form the right side, so they may have been here all night.

Degas carefully composed this scene of real life and painted it in his studio with an actress and a bohemian artist from the Impressionists' circle posing for him as models.  He got criticized for his use of  recognizable individuals as degenerates and according to Musee d'Orsay's website he publicly had to declare that they were not alcoholics.

There is a connection between this painting and the naturalism literary school, which Emile Zola was a part of. Zola started a serial publication, in the spring on 1876, of a scandalous novel about a laundress's slide into alcoholism.1  Both Degas and Zola were telling the dismaying stories of modern society.  In a Cafe, is Degas' detached observation of a contemporary problem that started with the Second Empire in France.  

1  Robert L. Herbert, Impressionism - Art, Leisure & Parisian Society, (Yale University Press, 1988) 74

Edouard Manet - Argenteuil, Les Canotiers

Edouard Manet,Argenteuil, les Canotiers, 1874
(Musee des Beaux-Arts Tournai, Belguim)

 

Industrialization brought with it new concepts of leisure time and day-trips to the country. Due to the railroads, little villages by the Seine were now just a train ride away.  The artists of the time, of course, took this opportunity to broaden their scope and picture this aspect of modernity as well.  Monet, Renoir and Pissaro were painting in the area of Argenteuil, a little town northwest of Paris that could be reached very easily by train.  Manet also went out to Argenteuil in the 1870's and did some paintings that, today, we read as a social commentary of the effects of industrialization on Parisian society.

The influence of the Impressionists can be seen in the lightening of Manet's palette from black and grays to blues and whites.  One fundamental difference between Manet and the other Impressionists was that he was still painting his works indoors and the models we see in the pictures would actually pose for him in his studio causing his figures to be frozen in time.

When we look at this painting of a couple sitting in front of boats by the water, at first sight it looks like a typical middle class courting couple, out for a day of leisure on the beautiful, blue waters of the Seine. Upon closer inspection, we can pick out a lot of clues to counter this first assumption.  First of all, there is a sense of disconnect between the couple.  While the man has his arm behind the woman and is turned towards her in a gesture of trying to creep into her space, she seems to be distant in her own world, staring out towards us.  Manet has the man holding her parasol while she is holding a bouquet he might have given her but even that does not dispel the detachment of the figures to one another. He seems to be visually enforcing the disconnect between the couple by their body language as well as the stripes of their clothing.

The emergence of the lower middle class seems to be one of the main circumstances of modernist art.1 In Argenteuil Manet is visualizing this phenomenon.  Fashion can be a very revealing sign about someone's social status; we can tell the woman in this painting is probably from the lower middle class since the colors and stripes of her dress, as well as her buttons, would have been considered garish and not refined at all.  The man's class is not as obvious as the woman's since he is in a boating outfit but he was most likely middle class as well.

There was also a lot of commentary about the petite bourgeois going out to the environs of Paris for a Sunday to enjoy the country while 'the country' was being polluted by industrialization.  Manet was fascinated by industry as well as the relationship between men and women.  The signs of industrialization are very apparent in his landscape paintings.  There is evidence of factories in the background where a smoke stack can be seen next to a church.  Also the deep blue of the water is suppose to be due to the refuse of india ink from the factories. He shows us the juxtaposition between the signs of industry and the leisure activities of the middle class.

Manet's flat surfaces reappear in Argenteuil as well.  The light and dark tones he uses without any middle values can be easily seen in the man's arm and pants.  He seems to have left some areas ambiguous, merging them without giving any specific detail as in the rope hanging in the side of the boat.

Here, Manet gives us a small portion of life, a slice of his vision.  He has captured the changes taking place and the results of those changes.  He has given us a sense of what Argenteuil was like in the 1874 with what all its incongruity, in boating near side of industry, the current fashions of the lower-middle classes and the  mobility and search for leisure of the petite bourgeois.


1  T.J. Clark, the Painting of Modern Life - Paris in the Art of Manet and his followers, (Princeton University Press, 1999)

Edouard Manet - Music at the Tuileries

Edouard Manet, Music at the Tuileries, 1862

Edouard Manet, the artist who is considered the link between Realism and Impressionism, painted this lively outdoor scene, set in Tuileries Garden, of wealthy Parisians at their leisure.  Men in dark jackets and light pants with top hats and women in fancy dresses and hats attests to the social status of the group.  We can almost hear the music and the conversation.  Coming from an upper-class family himself, Manet would be present at such events and this was probably his own experience.

Leisure time and recreational activities like listening to music on a Sunday were all parts of modernity.  Manet actually painted himself into this painting in the position of the flaneur, observing the crowd from the left front corner. Manet came from a wealthy family and he was engaged with and knew his way around society, in this respect, he fit Baudelaire's description of a flaneur perfectly. Like Courbet did in  After Dinner at Ornans, he also incorporated his friends into the picture, Baudelair, Theophile Gautier and Baron Taylor as well as his brother Eugene Manet.  

As much as looking for new expressions of art, Manet still wanted to be traditional. He was balancing to see how much he could breakdown tradition and get away with it.  He still wanted to go through traditional channels for exhibiting his work and never wanted to exhibit with the Impressionists.  A lot of people think of him as the'father of modernism.'  The technique he used in this painting creates a really odd flatness.  He  removed the in-between, transitional tones and  butted one color next to the other.  Especially in the umbrella in the front, he used light and dark gray side by side just with a black outline.  

 In his own way he is borrowing from and paying homage to Gustave Courbet in this work. The collective distraction that is present in this painting is very similar to Courbet's Burial at Ornans. The little girls' elaborate dresses and the way they are playing in the ground recall the altar boys' standing on the left side of the Ornans painting.  In Courbet's painting there is a sea of black which is for mourning, here the context changes to become men going out on a city day.  The shock of red in the Beadles costumes in the middle of Courbet's painting is played off with the yellow and blue dresses of the women in the front.  In both paintings, the main elements for each event is hidden, we don't see the body of the deceased for the funeral nor see the music for listening.  The dog in Courbet is replaced by an umbrella in Manet and Manet's brother is in the position of the Veteran of 1783 in Courbet.

Manet's crowd is bigger than Courbet's and there is no sign of religion, it is a scene of leisure.  The people are already gathered in Music at the Tuileries unlike the moment before the burial at Courbet's painting. There is also a difference in their palettes, Manet uses a light palette to suit the occasion and the sunny day is reflected in his tones of yellow, blue and white. While in A Burial at Ornans there is a huge sky up above, Music at Tuileries is packed full of trees.

Manet liked to borrow from the past in his art while stylistically using modern techniques. In this painting he is acknowledging Courbet while leading the way for the young Impressionists with his sketchy brush-strokes, and light color palette.  Overall, it gives us a great picture of the recreation of upper-class society in 1862 Paris.

Modernity - Haussmannization of Paris and "the Painters of Modern Life"

Edouard Manet, Le Dejeuner sur l'Herbe, 1863

Napoleon  III, believed in the industrialization of France and commissioned Baron Haussmann between 1850 -1870 , to rebuild Paris.  Haussman instigated a very ambitious program of city planning that destroyed the medieval fabric of the city and replaced it with large boulevards, new bridges, an opera house, and avenues giving new perspectives to monuments. Industrialization in the form of railroads and gas lamps were conveniences that aided  the newly forming bourgeoisie to enjoy their leisurely pursuits. Although he had many  passionate critics, the new spaces created by Hausmannization were where the spectacle of Paris was put on display.  These spaces were also where the different classes of society could be seen to 'coexist but not  connect' together.  People complained of  different spheres of society and different quarters that defined Paris overlapping and blurring the lines of traditional conventions. As T. J. Clark points out all these different territories seem to be places laid on for display but also ambiguity, where people are hard to make out, their gestures and expressions unconvincing, their purpose obscure The essential myth of modern life is the marginal, it is ambiguity, it is mixture of classes and classifications, it is anomie and improvisation, it is the reign of generalized illusion .1  All of these characteristics seem to be the elements that can be found in the paintings of Manet and Impressionist artists whom he mentored and influenced.

Charles Baudelair, in his essay of 1863 'The Painter of Modern Life' published in Le Figaro described modernity as 'the ephemeral, the fugitive, the contingent'.  The main protagonist in modernity was the Flaneur, whom Baudelair described as  "a gentleman stroller of city streets and a detached, well-informed observer with exquisite manners and impeccable dress who wandered around town and observed the goings on.' In this sense all the impressionists were flaneurs and Manet's work is described as the 'realism of the flaneur.'


1.  T.J. Clark, The Painting of Modern Life - Paris in the Art of Manet and his followers, (Princeton University Press 1999) 48

Edouard Manet, Un Bar aux Folies-Bergere, 1882

Edouard Manet, Olympia, 1863