EXAM I

Question 1

Answer 1

Degas, Musicians in the Orchestra, c. 1870

• One type of his ballerinas - from the pit
• world of musicians juxtaposed with the ephemeral world of ballerinas
  
  • Crops their heads
• Bass fiddle
  
  • Link
• Harp leads to man leering to stage
• ABONNE - allows access like season ticket holders to see the ballerinas in all facets
• quick stroke for ballerina thick stroke for men - genders
• Viewpoint focuses on focus aspect for performance

Question 2

Answer 2

Degas, The Dance Class, 1874

Left - Paris d’Orsay

Right - New York Met

• Repetition and habit
• Teacher = Michel pentrous
• vertical elements juxtaposed to ballerinas as the edge of the composition
• changes the floorboards in each variation
• unlovely of every day - bored, sitting, waiting, unidealized
• became an abonne
• Lower class = ballerinas
• ridigity of teacher vs ethereal of skirts - self canbalizing

Question 3

Answer 3

Degas, Portrait of Achille Degas as a Cadet, 1857

• Like Manet, Degas was born into a wealthy family
  
  • Dad was banker
  • Mom was Creole
• Went to fancy schools, and went to Italy and immersed in the art of the past
• always struggles with academic past and training and also interest in modernism
• friendship with manet
• Early career
• Inspired by a portrait of Ingres
• Degas interested in human form
• explores the freedom to experiment

Question 4

Answer 4

Degas, Mary Cassatt at the Louvre, 1879-1880

Left - In the Etruscan Gallery: etching, drypoint, aquatint

Right - In the Paintings Gallery: Pastel on paper

• She posed for Degas frequently
• Woman looking at art, represented in medium is like where is waldo
• Sister Lydia is meant to be other figure
• leans on umbrella not parasol - tense figure
• See her from the back as active and engaged with the art work
• Using ink and resin and copper and pastels - etching process
• Can see finger prints - showing his hand

Question 5

Answer 5

Degas, Name Day of the Madame, 1879

• Series of 50 - women working in brothels
• Action
• Cropping
• Lights look like boobs
• unidealized body about to work
• socking
• unproper reprent ocer sexuality
• Works them over and over connects to subject

Question 6

Answer 6

Manet, The Café-Concert, c. 1879

• Men of all classes and women of questionable ones
• Classic trope fo Manet to capture - cafe culture
• Mixing of classes
• V leads on one side with the upper left as a reflection
• Was one apart of a large work with a corner of a cafe but cut them apart
• same beer server represented but more brushing in one
• Cafe Reichshoffen
• Woman cut off - prostitute, not idealized
• This man well to do - dress
• wants to convey compression of space but mostly UNDER LYING LONELINESS AND DISCONNECTION of people in social space
• Labor of women emphasized as a source of entertainment

Question 7

Answer 7

Morisot, Eugène Manet on the Isle of Wight, 1875

• Marries manets brother and goes to the isle of wight on honeymoon with family
• nanny in white apron
• little girl looking at the sea
• Husband as model is unprecedented
  
  • looking at little girl through window
  • liminal space - curtains railing - circumscribes our view - flatness

Question 8

Answer 8

Degas, Ballet Rehearsal on Stage, 1874

Top - Pastel over brush and ink drawing

Bottom - Oil mixed with turpentine over brush and ink drawing

• Abonne watching the girls from the side of the stage
• Plays with poses - unrealistic and confusing with frontal figure
• Fiddlehead
• different variations
• Plays with habit and formal characteristics versions

Question 9

Answer 9

Degas, Song of the Dog, c. 1875 - 1877

• vigorous vulgarity of the performers.
• There is nothing elegant about this woman’s pose. Her hands suggest the movement of a dog
• The lines of the mouth, as she bawls forth the vulgar song, her exultant exaggeration, showing she is conscious of her power over her audience,
• Cafe culture
• He placed the profile strongly against a yellow pillar which cuts the composition, and contrasted the face, lighted drastically by footlights
• he has twice enlarged the picture by adding strips of paper to the right and working over them. - interest in the process and showing his hand

Question 10

Answer 10

Manet, Masked Ball at the Opéra, 1873

• Flirts with how modern life has evolved in Paris, night life in paris is lively
• Small Scale
• Longshoreman clothing - prostitutes
  
  • Juxtaposing with the proper women and how they veil themselves
• Upper balcony - flesh market; sexually intimate
  
  • Extension of streets
• all about flirtation
• The woman being unmasked - on the ground
• Polichenelle figure - president and Manet projects disagreement with the Franco Prussian war - jokester, deceitful, seen from behind, historical connection to the president, hand plays with space, calls attention to the flatness of top hats
• Cut and crop of painting calls to the spontaneity of it
• FIgures = friends, models, and includes himself on the right like in the Tuileries
• forces us to think complexly
• Manet was academically trained by rejects classical pat and traditional narrative
• Amoral vs. immoral - political-historical context
• By Manet signing on calling card - marks him modernist (like Morisot)
• Synecdoche - Nochlin

Reading Connection

• Nochlin

Question 11

Answer 11

Cassatt, In the Loge, 1880

• Loge in theater - proper women
• Appealing and available subject matter
• Comedie Francaise - theater during the day
• cropping raises questions - the choice to wonder is this woman alone?
• Shes the agent of the gaze
• WOman looking at the performer
• someone else?
• man gazing at her so aggressively
• us looking at the man
• man looking at us
• undoes the conventions of the gaze
• giving her power - connects to her as artist
• In profile - opera glasses limit the view of her and the man’s view of her
• intensity of the act of looking in body language
• shows her hand
• aware of the man? defying? unaware?
• glove on hand - transgressive o play with wondering
• Connects to renoir the loge - as if she is responding to this work and how the woman and gender is represented

Question 12

Answer 12

Cassatt, The Loge, 1880

• Younger twins resisting conventions
• looking miserable
• bending of pictorial space with the use of the architecture
• modern chandeliers and connection to anxiety surrounding the change in lighting in Paris

READING - Clayson

Question 13

Answer 13

Degas, Place de la Concorde (Count Lepic and his Daughters) 1876

• Depicts his good friend with his daughters
• Hes the focus of a painting without a focus - disconnect among people in the city
• Doesn’t idealize family or children - cant control children
• Center is empty space
  
  • Horse coming into composition emphasizes ephemeral and transient
• Centrifical perspective - moving out of picture plane
• asymmetrical and unstable
• our view is muted and he chooses our perspective
• Connection to Franco Prussian war with the statue and mourning loss

Question 14

Answer 14

Cassatt, Woman with Pearl Necklace in a Loge, 1879

• family joined her eventually this is her sister
• mirror behind her reinterperts reflection complex space - like folies bergere
• CASSATT AND LOGES

Question 15

Answer 15

Manet, The Balcony, 1868

• Model in the bottom left = Morisot (becomes his favorite model, and victorine goes) but his brother marries her and he stops using her
• Relation to Spain as inspiration through Goya
• Other woman = violinist
• Man = painter
• Shadow = manets son or brother, unclear
• Mystery and seduction of prostitutes on a balcony
• Sense of space behind the figures
• Clarifies the building as a Hausman building - modern
• using green paint now available shows modernity
• Asymmetrical composition
  
  • Shutters & balcony inforces flatness and shows the canvas its on
  • Not VERISTIC
• References to real-life & the moment
  
  • dog playing with ball
  • a figure moving out to the balcony
• Modernity and spontaneity in the work

Question 16

Answer 16

Degas, Miss Lala at the Cirque Fernando, 1879

• Performer with strength of her jaw - lifted up by it
• Represents her within the space - many sketches and variations
• Emphasis on architectural elements
• Highlights instability of lala through architecture - ribs
• Race emphasized in some of his studies
• Artistic process
• Creates unusual view point emphasizing formal construction
• oscillates between flatness and depth
• Looking from below is dizzy angle
• Asymmetric is degas modern language nothing harmonious or stable
• Projects his anxieties about his own race and milado mixing
• interested in the psychology of his figures
• lala is powerful
• Body is emphasized
• Calling this a portrait is also an issue
  
  • Objectified
  • Degas other portraits
  • identity and representation - shes Prussian and in France
  • her face
• Not a positive image

READING

Brown

Question 17

Answer 17

Morisot, The Wetnurse, 1880s

• Critic saying unfinished because a woman like eve not finishing the apple
• Compricious
• Invisable form of labor that makes her own labor possible (wet nurse taking care and nursing child)
• The hired woman bursing the baby - typical fo the class anc conventional subject of nursing
• but Undoes it by identifying nurse by bonnet
  
  • Not an academic madonna and child or mom and child scene
• Undoes all formal expectation
  
  • grass
  • parasol
  • verges on unreadable
  • asserts her own work
• Painting the labor and being clear of her own labor of painting

READING - Nochlin

Question 18

Answer 18

Morisot, On The Balcony, 1872

• Sold for 4.08 million estimated for 1.5 shows undervalue of her work
• Yves - Sister and her daughter at the family home
• Manipulating space - getting rid of the Siene
• invalid - Paris tallest building at the time - gold leaf
• Deliberately compresses space since most noticeable and visible from the balcony
• represents a viewpoint known and familiar to her like her subject matter
• Women in the city - a time when prop women relationship with city was prescribed but being in passy allowed her more freedom
• The painting explores gender and expectation as child looks at the city and mother looks at the child
  
  • MORISOT TROPE
• Mixing paint on the canvas

Question 19

Answer 19

Degas, Café-Concert at Les Ambassadeurs, 1876

• Upscale cafe - attached to the hotel with ambassadors so upper-class men and prostitutes
• Prostitutes represented but not full idealized but we understand
• Uses orchestra pit and links the masculine world of it and the female world of performers
  
  • Fiddle form repeats
  • Act of performing - movement
• Mirror behind her with the reflection of lights made from fingerprints - artists hand
• Women on stage waiting their turn
  
  • Showing ideal performance - instability of pose

Question 20

Answer 20

Degas, Cotton Market, New Orleans, 1873

• The family office
• Constructed angle - above and zoomed-in - arranged in a zig zag
• Specific family members - brother, uncle
• Composition finds the focus in the lack of focus
  
  • color & rectangles
• The complexity of composition allows him to create cohesion

Question 21

Answer 21

Manet, The Railway, 1873

• Last painting of Victorine, placed backyard of the little girl - Manet’s fmaily friend
• ACCEPTED into the salon
• Looks spontaneous but is anything but
  
  • COMMON THEME FOR MANET
• Backyard backed up to the Gare train station
  
  • Contemporary and most modern place in Paris - new
• Victorine modeling as proper parisian - or is she? leaving us questioning
  
  • literate - finger in book
  • Look @ viewer isn’t confrontational like previous ones, acknowledges us
  • Mother? Nanny? *wetnurse connection?
• Plays with academic traditions and dispells them but depicting little girl from behind
  
  • The inverse of victorine - age, stance, color
• Uses the bars formally - lines repeat flatness of picture place and are imperfectly placed
  
  • undermines conventions
• calls attention to proper bourgeois life disrupted by construction
• not illusionistic brushwork - undoes construction and shows his hand
• Wearing the choker - think about her class
• Little girl formal purpose - long arm, highlights the steam and modernity of image
• Earring & grapes - unposed and still life
• Maquillage - makeup is obvious, questioning again as proper women wouldn’t have this make

Question 22

Answer 22

Manet, Nana, 1877

• Rejected by Salon
• Prostitute applying makeup while being watched
  
  • Wearing corset = provocative - and can see aspects of toilette
• Sense of luxury - white silk corset, velvet couch
• Can see a discarded garment in one side of the frame and the man cut off in other side
• Creation of her own beauty
  
  • Mirror is not a reflection
• The background is inspired by a friends Kimono - marks of Modernist
• Crane = slane term for prostitute in french - mimics forms of her body formally
  
  • all very vertical - her, the painting the crane
• Connection to Zola and his novel nana puts on makeup
• Nana as a continuation of olympia - how man is now in painting and viewer sees as if she has gotten up to get ready
• Model was young actress
• Man looking at her, she looks at viewer but not confrontational while the crane looks at the man
  
  • Playing with gaze
• Bracelet

Question 23

Answer 23

Manet, Music in the Tuileries, 1862

• The work is an early example of Manet’s painterly style
• Impressionism - leisure culture
• The painting depicts the gatherings of Parisians at weekly concerts in the Tuileries gardens near the Louvre
• Intermingling
• Manet has included several of his friends, artists, authors, and musicians who take part, and a self-portrait. Manet is depicted on the far left; next to him is another painter Albert de Balleroy.
  
  • Charles Baudelaire included
• he composition has been carefully ordered, reflecting gender attitudes of the time: the women—grounded and passive—are mostly pictured seated, while the men—mobile and active—stand.
• the reduction of the sky to a paltry triangle of blue, or the insistence of that tree trunk, off-center, that slices through the picture plane, as one finds in Japanese prints, disrupting the horizontal axis and in turn the illusion of depth

Reading

Baudelaire

Question 24

Answer 24

Morisot, The Cradle, 1872

• Sister with first child - rejected by salon but exhibited with impressionists and hung in the jeu de paume - WWII works needed to be protected only work listed by a woman
• Viewers wanted to see as sentimental (child’s elbow mimics moms) but the maternal gaze is given the right to look
• Uses pink ribbon to explore more formal possibilities of mixing and playing
• Forceful image
  
  • Crafted - blue bow - curtains - elbow - lace
  • Repetition
• Undercutting sentiment by showing her hand and unproblematic image of child - unprecedented style
• Obscures the view - confrontational and just think about it - not idealized theme of gaze not for viewer maternal gaze - different than other talked about gazes with dega and manet

Question 25

Answer 25

Manet, Luncheon on the Grass (Le déjeuner sur l’herbe) 1863

• The same year as Olympia & debuted at salon de refuse & Zola defends it too
• Not just nude, naked, deliberately discarded clothing
• Not idealized body - confrontational gaze - active
  
  • Nothing about her passive or unintentional
• Victorine as model
• 4 figures
  
  • Contemporary figures - dress
• Could be read as Olympia chose same model and forces viewer to question the connection
• The man in the middle = brother in law
• Man on right = composite of his brothers
  
  • MODERN
• Again, thinking about the past - Titan’s FETE CHAMPETRE
  
  • sex, garden, leisure, same tropes but formally very different
  • Manet is flat, titan uses atmospheric perspective and manet doesnt
• Anatomy manipulated like Olympia
• Traditionally, the woman is looked at by he changes it by having the woman looking
• Woman in the back is spatially and compositionally confusing
• Modern b/c tension is created and he wont answer/resolve
• Both paintings focus on sex, commerce, men, women, imbalance of class, gaze,
• Displayed the painting of MANET BROTHER IN COSTUME AND VICTORINE IN COSTUME
  
  • Suggests that Victorine takes off her garments and brother puts them on
  • Gender is a construct
  • Illusionism is undine formally and subject matter

Question 26

Answer 26

Manet, View of Universal Exhibition of 1867, 1867

• Never quite finished
• Diversity of people at these events - every 10 years in
• France puttings itself on display for the world to see
• The gardener = working class
• Young boy = well dressed
• Young merchant
• Imperial guards
• elegant men & couple
• Lower class women
• Monk from another country
• Hot air balloon - Nadar and photography & technology
• Lack of connectedness of class & Parisian society here but this event was intermingling
• Constructed view point from a top the hill

Question 27

Answer 27

Degas, Singer with a Glove, c. 1878

• first see very bright and very dark colors, contrasting each other starkly.
  
  • The blackness of the woman’s gloved hand is a complete opposite to her pale complexion and pink toned dress. In the background is where we see pops of color, long painterly washes of orange-red, light green, and pale yellow.
• The entire image maintains the visual of seeing the artist’s hand at work;
• The shading on her face continues this implication of a darkness looming over the woman, a dark shadow cast over her eyes and top of her head. Her clothing colors for such a performance can indicate sorrow or anger as well, as the typical glove color for such a time you would imagine to be white, not black
• performing - dress implies an elite status

Question 28

Answer 28

Degas, Princess Pauline de Metternich, c. 1865

• Princess = Hungarian born, lived in napoleon downfall, notorious for unprincess like behavior - smoking & dancing
  
  • Contradiction and everent like degas
• undoing traditional portraiture
• Based on photo with her husband
  
  • whole portrait is fabricated
  • background is dancing onto her & creates confusion
  • Very deliberate
• uses finger to scratch and blur her face - shows his hand
• without husband individualizes her
  
  • Highlights her unusualness as well -
• Work as defiant and bold as she is
• Compared to Winterhalter’s work

READING

Kessler

Question 29

Answer 29

Degas, The Tub, 1886 (Paris)

• Explores women and the labor of the body
• Needed help to bathe during the time - suggest someone is thereby seeing the toilette
• Bathing between clients
• Sketched in brothels
• Pastel on paper
• Resists the gaze of the man not on display through her body language
• Formal complexities - constructed view point
  
  • Voyistic perspective
• pose and shelf look unstable
• interested in how the female form is represented
  
  • folded in on itself
• Proper women wouldn’t touch body
• unidealized body
• unstable angle for unstable life
• how degas changes the view

READING

Armstrong

Question 30

Answer 30

Manet, Young Man in the Costume of a Majo, 1863

• Manets brother
• Conneciton ot Luncheon on the grass, mademosielle v
• Takes clothes off to put them on - gender

Question 31

Answer 31

Degas, Mary Cassatt, 1879-1884

• Not idealized, but she didnt want it
• Obscures the objects in her hands - photographs
• unconventional pose and viewpoint
  
  • deep conversation
• Not unfinished uses setting to animate picture
• Inventive and deliberately imperfect
  
  • friendship

Question 32

Answer 32

Degas, In a Café (Absinthe Drinkers) 1875 - 1876

• Model = friend (elen andre was an artist, and marcel da laboutin was a print maker)
• La Louvelle cafe!
• Leads us into composition through zig zag (like new orleans)
  
  • News paper
  • tables
• Crops at right edge, asymmetrical as if were sitting near by
• The structural complexity of modern life
• Emphasis on medium and surface
  
  • Bows on the dress look as sad as she
• Morning scene with absinth as a hangover
• shadows = melancholy
• no moral lesson

Question 33

Answer 33

Manet, Absinthe Drinker, 1859

• Submitted & rejected from the salon - subject matter low life, the fringe of society
• Large scale work - typically reserved for royalty
• Top hat - upper class
• Absinthe = huge problem & addictive, banned in 1915 and then reformulated
• Formally controversial - broad strokes, dark colors, spatial inconsistencies, no blending, shadow confusion (foot & glass)
  
  • Highlights face & drink
  • Multiple perspectives - standing? sitting?
• No moral undertone - atypical for subject matter
  
  • Marks Manet as MODERNIST
  • Doesn’t let the viewer feel pity
• Neutral colors - blue sock & green drink
• No clear meaning - Manet manipulating the meaning

Question 34

Answer 34

Manet, A Bar at the Folies-Berére, 1882

• One of his last paintings - suffering from syphilis neurological issues
• Large scale
• Many themes of her career
  
  • labor, modern women, representation, modern optical, social class, cafe culture
• Dead pan seriousness
  
  • Bar maid - actual model Suzanne
• Constructed composition - in his studio
• Folies Bergere - huge musical, lavish, mirrors, prostitute
• Bar maid - vendor of love and preposition
• Not a place where high class women went
• Commerce and consumption - drinks, entertainment and women
• Creates optical confusion
  
  • Mirror behind her - reflection
• Foreground - lavishly painted, rich
  
  • bass pale ale, compari advertising and branding
  • Gold gloves connect with gold champagne
• Playing with perspective
  
  • Reflection of bar and bottles doesn’t match the foreground
  • Posture doesnt match
  • multiple perspective
  • Denying illusionism - wants confusion
• What is she seeing? space is complex - the crowd, top hats, visual ambiguity of the scene
• REminds viewer what you look at is his creation
• Were spectators of painting but crowd is spectator of event no fixed view
• Her blank stare stuck behind bar is vulnerable and dominant
  
  • Boredom and disconnect
  • man not as emphasized
  • not idealized

Question 35

Answer 35

Manet, Street Singer, 1862

• Model = Victorine
• Ruffing up of skirt & eating in public = provocative & not something of that class would do (controversial)
• Inspired by a real-life encounter Manet had, sense of moment and movement
• The garment is proper so not congruent with her status as a prostitute and wearing a man’s hat (gender relations)
  
  • Expectations and fashion make the subject puzzling
  • Proper woman posing as impoverished?
• Color - Whimsically guides eye cherries to her mouth, pink of her skin
  
  • Unifies composition
• There is nothing without careful planning
  
  • organizations of color - red cherries, red skin, white with the skirt and the man’s apron
• Plays with class and framing our view by the door frame while he also frames our view
  
  • What is both in and out of our view
• The upper part of the garment in focus vs. bottom suggests movement - interest in photography

READING

• KESSLER - Degas
  
  • Use of photography
  • What is both in and outside the picture plane - planning of composition

Question 36

Answer 36

Morisot, The Interior, 1872

• Parlor of sisters home with visitor at the window
• feminine domestic spaces
  
  • periwinkle and pink dress = fem
• Jardiniere
  
  • The mirror reflection of real flowers too
  • leaf coming in and out attent to cropping and her hand
  • like manet frames within a frame
• Another painting of hers leaning aginst jardinere - inserting herself
  
  • sign its
• Little girl & mother view trope

Question 37

Answer 37

Morisot, Villa by the Sea, 1874

• Subject matter in her realm
• Typical impressionist subject - vacation and leisure but also of little importance to academics making it also suitable for women
• sister and niece looking out - typical Morisot trope
• Privatizes exterior space - liminal
• Inside/outside space - block our view and shows women’s limits to public space
• confidently describes things in smudges
• not wanting to give the viewer all of it

Question 38

Answer 38

Manet, Corner of a Café-Concert, 1878-1880

Men of all classes and women of questionable ones

Classic trope fo Manet to capture - cafe culture

Mixing of classes

Was one apart of a large work with the corner of a cafe but cut them a part

same beer server represented but more brushing in one

Cafe Reichshoffen

This man NOT well to do - dress

wants to convey compression of space but mostly UNDER LYING LONELINESS AND DISCONNECTION of people in social space

Question 39

Answer 39

Manet, Portrait of Émile Zola, 1868

• Friend of Manet’s - writer
• Collaged
  
  • Manets version of print from japan by kumaki
  • Reference to velaquez print - removed from high academy of painting
  • Photogrpah of olympia - differnt gaze - gazing away fro mviewer at Zola
• Pastiche - books & japanese screen/print
• Creates a setting
• Painted flatly
• Exhibited in 1868 and peope loved it

Question 40

Answer 40

Renoir, The Loge, 1874

• connects to cassatt’s in the loge

Question 41

Answer 41

Degas, The Interior, 1868

• Epitomizes themes of men, women, instability of view
• Mysterious
• Model = Henri, friend
• Asks more questions than answered
• Chambre de Bonne - small quarters where the maid would’ve lived
• Internal psychological interest
• Working with and against narrative
• potential narrative - novel from emile zola - girl and bf killed husband and this is the moment after - have guilt - modern complex people
• Failure of communication with genders
• Foreground is empty and tilted floorboard going bac
• Garment on the bed is suggestive and makes the viewer question
• Threatening shadow of a man
• Tension & disconnect with lighting and space
  
  • Highlights under garments in suitcase

Question 42

Answer 42

Degas, In a Brothel Salon, 1879

Series of women working in brothels

Action

Cropping

Lights look like boobs

unidealized body about to work

socking

unproper reprent ocer sexuality

Works them over and over connects to subject

Question 43

Answer 43

Morisot, Mother and Sister of the Artist, 1869 - 1870

• Sister had just come home to Passy, awaiting the birth of a child
• Exhibited at first salon in 1870
• Morisot takes subject matter that is available/accessible to her
  
  • Proper women’s life
  • reinvents it in terms of formal language - gestural
• Inconsistency - pattern on the couch - undoes expectation by showing her hand
• The mirror is not giving the full view of the window but suggesting it
• Framing of mirror within frame of picture
• Rejects sentimental reading of mother and daughter
  
  • The composition is fragmented - inserting her inventiveness
• Acceptable subject but undercuts by how its painted
• *

Question 44

Answer 44

Manet, Old Musician, 1862

• Huge scale - typically biblical, religious, royal not marginal characters
  
  • National Gallery DC
• The same year as music in the Tuileries
• Manet’s studio & home neighborhood (Batignolles) was under construction & would see vacant lots & discombobulating to urban poor so he represents figures he’d see
  
  • Uprooted & deposed
  • The raw fact of Hausmannization
• The model (sitting figure) was a musician in the neighborhood - recognized & was injured on construction job - then took to violin
• Young gypsie figure - term at the time defined someone without a place
  
  • holding baby
• Two street merchants
  
  • left - acrobat
  • other - drunk & refers to absinthe drinker
  • ragpicker - cut out of picture plane (MODERNIST)
  • See them from different perspectives
• Clothing & class - boys clothing is large which shows claim about poverty affecting all people
• Asymmetrical composition
• Figures look pasted - calling attention to no coherent connection other than fringes of society like absinthe drinker
  
  • Like absinthe drinker - plays with spatial manipulation - boy is too large which highlights the lack of root in society
• Self-cannibalizing his own work and disrupts tradition
• Plays with expectation and the past

Question 45

Answer 45

Degas, Women on a Café Terrace, Evening, 1877

• Small
• Prostitutes
• Cafe montmartre
• convey sense of action
• the vulgar gesture of thumb
• stark makeup - a prostitute - manet railway
• architecture emphasizes contemporary of work
• working or at leisure? ever not working
• *

Question 46

Answer 46

Manet, Olympia, 1863

• Salon of 1865, Salon de refuse 1863
• Victorine as the model of a prostitute in a brothel
• Prostitution huge issue and conflict at the time - confrontational work
  
  • Nessicary aspect of bourgeois society to be talked about
  • Prostitution was legal and had to be checked, but anxiety around clandestine ones
• Being confronted with this unspoken aspect of society at the salon was greeted poorly by the public
• Undermines the academy through painterly brush stokes - shoulder, underarm hair, reality of real bodies
• Bracelet belonged to manets mother links her to the here and now
• Bouquet is sign of male suitor & reminds viewer of the fact she covers neitals, hand calls attention to it but the flower is already open
• Representation of feminity - Manet’s refusal to idealize form
  
  • Odd knee
  • Leg undoing anatomy
  • Where is her hip?
• She looked dirty
• HER GAZE - confrontational, at the viewer, asertive, active, direct
  
  • A direct contradiction to the academic passive gaze in female nudes
  • She is NAKED - venus is NUDE
• Manet is looking @ past but undoes it- titian venus of urbino
  
  • Undoing conventions THEME
• Looks at photography & visual affects
• Race, class, wealth
• Race
  
  • juxtaposing racial differences - maid as equally confrontational
  • Maid is painfully realistic and modern role
• Characterized by critics
• Exhibited with Manets, Christ Mocked by Soldiers at salon
  
  • acceptable subject matter but approach criticized
  • Two bodies next to each other reinforce critics
• Emile Zola defends manet & olympia in his novel
  
  • Formal elements - connection to japenese influence
  • different should be taken for what it is & accept all art

Question 47

Answer 47

Degas, Waiting, 1879

Series of women working in brothels

Action

Cropping

Lights look like boobs

unidealized body about to work

socking

unproper reprent ocer sexuality

Works them over and over connects to subject

Question 48

Answer 48

Manet, Plum Brandy (La Prune) c. 1877

• La Prune = drink
• Cafe culture
• permeates color of prune in skin, and clothes like the singer
• Drinking might be improper as she’s alone with cigar and brandy and improper posture
  
  • Question her class
• NOT a social critique, rarely ever is
• Her face is painterly gives us imperfection
• Marble table top - material exploring the material
  
  • Leads eye - founded counter then foes to the grill - interactive
• Manet plays with framing her through the vent
  
  • like the railway
  • Frame outside and inside
• Cropping is emphasized
  
  • Bow on dresses and bread on lap - not giving us her legs

Question 49

Answer 49

Manet, Victorine Meurent, 1862

• Victorine NOT posed as a prostitute, but as herself
• Small composition
• Borrows from the idea of close up - photography, fashion journals, making the composition feel larger and Manet Modern
• Freedom of brushwork, not hiding his hand
  
  • Chin & bottom lip
  • The underside of nose echoing upper lip
• Light and shadow - the flatness of the face
• Choker & bow - a mark of a modern woman
  
  • The choker is wrapped in skin & intension is created
  • Connection with Olympia
• Escaping of hair shows the imperfections of modern life
• By exploring through his brushwork he’s adhering to modernism and reject the academic painting

READING

• KESSLER - degas
  
  • pauline and victorine - differnt classes
  • showing hand in chin, lips, eyes
  • photogrpahy

Question 50

Answer 50

Degas, The Tub, 1886 (CT)

Explores women and the labor of the body

Needed help to bathe during the time - suggest someone is thereby seeing the toilette

Bathing between clients

Sketched in brothels

Pastel on paper

Resists the gaze of the man not on display through her body language

Formal complexities - constructed view point

Voyistic perspective

pose and shelf look unstable

interested in how the female form is represented

folded in on itself

Proper women wouldn’t touch body

unidealizedd body

unstable angle for unstable life

how degas changes the view

READING = ARMSTRONG

Question 51

Answer 51

Manet, Mademoiselle V . . . in the Costume of an Espada, 1862

• Victorine in masculine clothes
• Undoing illusionism
• Gender confrontation
• Connection ot Luncheon & Young man in costume of a majo

Question 52

Answer 52

Degas, Woman Drying her Foot, 1886

• Degas interested in the mundane moments
  
  • Habitual movements
  • everyday
• Facture - moving of the hand and putting on the material (ARMSTRONG)
• Emphasize the unlovely not seduced by flesh the males gaze is obstructed - broken bodies not like venus
• Separate form and subject
• Degas interested in the female body
  
  • Ballet = emblem of idealizing feminine beauty but actually erotic and sexualized and facilitated - the hard and sad life
• Loved ballet because of his love for habitual movements

READING

Armstrong

Question 53

Answer 53

Degas, Bellelli Family, 1858-1860

• Family in Italy - Aunt in mourning attire - pregnant - daughters and husband
• Lifesize
  
  • Confident and elegant painting
• Honoring academic tradition while also undercutting it
• Dignified, emphasis on psychological in expression and poses
• Family breaking a part - can see it in composition and figures stances
• Julia aligned with mother other daughter caught in the middle
• Close with an aunt - favored in picture
• Husband in the process of leaving
• Unstable composition beside the aunt
• dog leaving the picture
• left is stable right isnt
• repetition of squares and triangles - stable figures

Question 54

Answer 54

Manet, Surprised Nymph, 1861

• the model for the painting was Suzanne Leen-hoff, Manet’s future wife
• the ambivalent attitude of the nude woman may suggest the artist’s response to his future wife who in later paintings is shown as an upright member of the bourgeoisie.
• Whereas The Surprised Nymph depicts a naked bourgeois woman who shields her body from the gaze of the voyeuristic onlooker
• Looking to past & rejecting - Rembrandt painting ‘Susanna and the Elders’, possibly as a play on the name of his lover.
• Gaze is not provacative - its shy - viewering disrupting her

Question 55

Answer 55

Morisot, View of Paris from the Trocadéro, 1872

• View of City - reminiscent of manet
• Painting from afar - invalid
• manipulating space at top of hill
• classic morisot trope of girl looking at city and mom looking at girl - unmolded child unknowing