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עמוד:10
nudes and Ca band ' s more-than-suggestive poses achieved fame , popularity and even respect . The j t rnrW ^/ J ^ W ^ MV urn m ^ I-I ^ im ^ f . m 'i 'i ^^ rf-7 'M ^ Napoleon the 3 for 40 , 000 francs . Sic ! Toulouse-Lautrec and Degas painted nudes and partially clad women in more than dubious surroundings . Their works , however , could be conveniently explained in terms of social critique . Only Renoir painted pink buxom schoolgirls with a frank admiration for their sexual appeal . He was excused , because his paintings revealed his weakness , even his addiction to the curves of the female flesh . Subsequent post-Impressionist and Modern art gave a much wider scope to the depiction of naked bodies . Not only women , but also men . Not only allusions to sex , but blatant representations of the act itself , perhaps culminating in the works of Klimt , Picasso , Dali or Beardsley . Despite poses masterful techniques , they rarely evoke in me the same feeling of discomfort as Manet's work does . The difference lies in the artist ' s moral attitude . While some of them make a social statement , others raise a standard of personal liberation from moralistic society . Manet's Victorine , despite her solid nudity , symbolizes neither critique nor personal endorsement . simply , seemingly of context and completely a-moral . It is this amorality that is so disturbing , expressed more in model's gaze than in her curving haunches . It is same a-morality that strikes me in Manet's Olympia , possibly reflected in a later period in some Picasso's etchings and in Lucien ' s . To me . a poignant reminder that it is our mind , transformed by the artist ' s , brain and hand , that pours W emotion into the body , which merely serves as a vessel . Manet's and hand , but more importantly - his mind , succeeded in immortalizing Victorine's beautiful shape and transforming it into more than a study of a naked female body . ? possibly finished by Titian ) , which was hanging in the Louvre , and an engraving executed after Raphael ' s drawing depicting river gods . Le Dejeuner sur I'herbe was submitted to the 1863 Salon and . predictably , rejected . It created quite a scandal at the Salon de Refusee and later figured in Zola's The Masterpiece 1886 ) as the focus of a thorny debate about art . The two men are Manet's brother Gustave and his future brother-in-law Ferdinand Leenhoff . The naked woman is Manet's model , Victorine Meurent . This painting's impact evoked resounding echoes in the works of other artists . Two years later Monet exhibited a monumental work under the same title . The backdrop of the dark forest and a patchily lit glade is similar , as are the strolling and sitting figures young men and women . As in Manet's work , men converse with men ( but also women with women ) . in Manet ' painting the actors in this play display , fine garments . But the similarity ends here . They all dressed . The naked body of Victorine Meurent , brightly lit by a strange source of light coming from the direction of the spectator , is missing . Monet ' s Dejeuner sur I'herbe is a painting about painting . is a truly impressionist interplay of light and dark colors in a setting outside the studio , in the open The moment captured is a mundane countryside picnic , like thousands others . Pal Szinyei Merse , a Hungarian Impressionist , produced a Luncheon on the Grass in 1873 , and Canadian Henri Beau painted another Dejeuner sur I'herbe in 1905 . But both are contextually small vignettes about the life and lack the power and drama . work create such a scandal ? Nudity , nudity , has been commonplace . Even in the more moralistic late seventeenth-early eighteenth entirely permissible , provided it was in a suitable context , mythological scenes , example . Under this guise , distinctively semipornographic works , such as Bouguereau's writhing
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