Todd Cronan at nonsite:
When Édouard Manet exhibited Olympia in the Salon of 1865, it unleashed a firestorm. Viewers were shocked by the subject matter—the sheer nakedness of the sitter—and by his formal treatment of the subject: critics lamented the lack of finish, the sharp contrast between light and dark, and, above all, the starkness of the model’s outward look at the viewer. For critics at the time, Manet’s shocking way with form went hand in hand with a sense of moral outrage, around gender and class. Olympia subtly but powerfully broke all the unspoken rules about the nude in painting and set the standard for a new form of revolutionary modern art.
Olympia has been subject to countless interpretations for over a century, but one subject has seemingly eluded critical commentary: race. If the white model Victorine Meurent has been at the center of many interpretations, what about the other, equally central character, the model’s black maid, Laure (we don’t know her last name).
more here.
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