Silent Witness
New York magazine|September 25 - October 08, 2023
Looking again at Manet's Olympia.
JERRY SALTZ
Silent Witness

IT IS A CLICHÉ: the work of art that scandalizes audiences upon its debut, only to get its due once the shock of the new fades away. Édouard Manet's 1863 masterpiece Olympia, the star of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's gigantic new show "Manet/Degas," in some respects fits this description. It was attacked when it was first exhibited at a salon in Paris in 1865, described as "ugly and repulsive" and "rancid." Its subject, a nude courtesan who looks right at the viewer while a Black maid looks at her, was called a "female gorilla." The painting was rehung near the ceiling to hide it from appalled critics, and it never sold during Manet's lifetime. However, the difference between Olympia and other great works of art that initially faced comparable revulsion is that Olympia shocks still.

Manet was only 33 when Olympia received its rude welcome, but he had already established himself as a rule-breaker and a provocateur with the exhibition two years earlier of The Luncheon on the Grass, which featured two rakish men in modern dress and two women, one of them nude, in an Edenic landscape. Olympia was similarly perverse. While audiences were likely used to paintings of nudes-the courtesan's languid pose appears to be based on Titian's Venus of Urbino, which was painted in the 1530s it was another thing to suggest that this slender jezebel was a Venus herself. Manet's painting was seen as an offense, an affront, a joke. (Manet wrote to Baudelaire looking for comfort. The poet told him to take it on the chin: "Do you think you are the first man put in this predicament?") Viewers had come expecting handsome renderings of light and shadow done with little to no brushwork showing.

This story is from the September 25 - October 08, 2023 edition of New York magazine.

Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.

This story is from the September 25 - October 08, 2023 edition of New York magazine.

Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.

MORE STORIES FROM NEW YORK MAGAZINEView All
Drowning in Slop - A thriving underground economy is clogging the internet with AI garbage-and it's only going to get worse.
New York magazine

Drowning in Slop - A thriving underground economy is clogging the internet with AI garbage-and it's only going to get worse.

SLOP started seeping into Neil Clarke's life in late 2022. Something strange was happening at Clarkesworld, the magazine. Clarke had founded in 2006 and built into a pillar of the world of speculative fiction. Submissions were increasing rapidly, but “there was something off about them,” he told me recently. He summarized a typical example: “Usually, it begins with the phrase ‘In the year 2250-something’ and then it goes on to say the Earth’s environment is in collapse and there are only three scientists who can save us. Then it describes them in great detail, each one with its own paragraph. And then—they’ve solved it! You know, it skips a major plot element, and the final scene is a celebration out of the ending of Star Wars.” Clarke said he had received “dozens of this story in various incarnations.”

time-read
10+ mins  |
September 23 - October 6, 2024
The City Politic- The Other Eric Adams Scandal The NYPD shot a fare evader, a cop, and two bystanders. He defends it.
New York magazine

The City Politic- The Other Eric Adams Scandal The NYPD shot a fare evader, a cop, and two bystanders. He defends it.

On Sunday, September 15, Derell Mickles hopped a turnstile, got asked to leave by cops, then entered the subway again ten minutes later through an emergency exit. This was at the Sutter Avenue L station, out by his mother's house, five stops from the end of the line. Police said they noticed he was holding a folded knife. They followed him up the stairs to the elevated train, asking him 38 times to drop the weapon.

time-read
5 mins  |
September 23 - October 6, 2024
Can the Media Survive?
New York magazine

Can the Media Survive?

BIG TECH, Feckless Owners, CORD-CUTTERS, RESTIVE STAFF, Smaller Audiences ... and the Return of PRINT?

time-read
5 mins  |
October 21 - November 03, 2024
Status Update
New York magazine

Status Update

Hannah Gadsby's fascinatingly untidy tour through life after fame and death.

time-read
5 mins  |
October 21 - November 03, 2024
A Matter of Perspective
New York magazine

A Matter of Perspective

A Matter of Perspective Steve McQueen's worst film is still a solid WWII drama.

time-read
3 mins  |
October 21 - November 03, 2024
Creator, Destroyer
New York magazine

Creator, Destroyer

A retrospective reveals an architect's vision, optimism, and supreme arrogance.

time-read
5 mins  |
October 21 - November 03, 2024
In Praise of Bad Readers
New York magazine

In Praise of Bad Readers

In a time of war, there is a danger in surveying the world as if it were a novel.

time-read
10+ mins  |
October 21 - November 03, 2024
Trust the Kieran Culkin Process
New York magazine

Trust the Kieran Culkin Process

First, he nearly dropped out of Oscar hopeful A Real Pain. Then he convinced Jesse Eisenberg to change the way he directs.

time-read
8 mins  |
October 21 - November 03, 2024
The Funniest Vampires on TV
New York magazine

The Funniest Vampires on TV

What We Do in the Shadows is coming to an end. Its idiosyncratic brand of comedy may be too.

time-read
5 mins  |
October 21 - November 03, 2024
The Water-Tower Penthouse
New York magazine

The Water-Tower Penthouse

Gigi Loizzo and Angel Molina's apartment on the Grand Concourse in the Bronx looks out on Yankee Stadium.

time-read
2 mins  |
October 21 - November 03, 2024