By Surya Tubach
Édouard Manet, Nana, 1877.
Kunsthalle Hamburg. Photo via Wikimedia Commons.
Nineteenth-century Paris
was obsessed with prostitutes. Courtesans (as the expensive mistresses of
politicians, businessmen, and princes were known) rose from poverty to enjoy
the glitz and glamour of the city’s wealthiest elite using what can only be called
sheer hustle. They commanded the era’s imagination, not only with their
luxurious apartments and opulent jewels, but with the power they exerted over
some of the most influential men of the time.
The artists of the era were
similarly preoccupied: French painting, drawing, and sculpture from the time is
replete with images of prostitutes. “Painters suddenly decided to paint what
was around them, what they were actually seeing,” historian Anka Muhlstein told
Artsy. “So instead of painting allegories or historical things, they would
paint what they encountered in everyday life.”
While these artists may
have focused on the same subject, they went about it in very different ways.
Edgar Degas depicted the more socially palatable world of theater and dance, a sexually
murky sphere where ballerinas and actresses operated as prostitutes on the
side. His paintings weren’t monumental; the subjects rarely face the viewer,
looking more like the unassuming and impoverished dancers they were. Édouard
Manet, on the other hand, favored canvases too large to ignore. His renditions
of prostitutes, portrayed with refinement and femininity, stare boldly out at
the viewer. Case in point: his 1877 painting Nana.
This piece is a nearly
life-size work of playful homage to the courtesans of the era. Nana, the
prostitute, is the star of the scene: Her body, from blonde head to delicately
pointed toe, fills the entire central third of the painting. Her presence is
bold, almost imposing; she overshadows her male customer, cut in half by the
frame and blending into the background with his dark suit. With a little
half-smile on her lips, she stares directly out at the viewer, implicating them
in whatever illicit scene they have stumbled onto. Rather than the typical
societal shame associated with prostitution, Nana appears both open and proud.
She is a woman who is aware of her power and how to use it.
Édouard Manet
Olympia, 1863
Musée d'Orsay, Paris
This piece is a nearly
life-size work of playful homage to the courtesans of the era. Nana, the
prostitute, is the star of the scene: Her body, from blonde head to delicately
pointed toe, fills the entire central third of the painting. Her presence is
bold, almost imposing; she overshadows her male customer, cut in half by the
frame and blending into the background with his dark suit. With a little
half-smile on her lips, she stares directly out at the viewer, implicating them
in whatever illicit scene they have stumbled onto. Rather than the typical
societal shame associated with prostitution, Nana appears both open and proud.
She is a woman who is aware of her power and how to use it.
Although today it hangs
proudly in Hamburg’s Kunsthalle, when the painting was first shown, the
reception was far from friendly. At the time, the art world was more
comfortable with painted nudes featuring a heavy dose of Orientalism. It
certainly wasn’t used to seeing a modern-day courtesan portrayed as a “pretty
girl, practically winking at you, practically making fun of the old man with
his top hat,” notes Muhlstein, whose book The Pen and the Brush explores the
relationship between 19th-century French painters and writers. “The fact that
she looked sympathetic, she looked appealing.…She looks extremely pleased with
herself, and I think that probably was shocking for people.” The French
Academic Salon, the only real path to artistic success in 19th-century France,
rejected the painting from its 1877 exhibition.
Manet nevertheless found a
way to display the work. In lieu of the salon, he hung it in the window of a
trinket shop on the Boulevard des Capucines, one of Paris’s main thoroughfares.
The painting became a popular attraction, toying with the visual pun of a
painted prostitute displayed on the same street real-life prostitutes would
frequent at night.
Manet was close friends
with the writer Émile Zola; both lived in the Montmartre neighborhood of Paris,
where they traded ideas and inspiration with other artists such as Degas and
Pierre-Auguste Renoir. (The group dubbed themselves the Batignolles and would
eventually form the Impressionists.) In dialogue with Manet’s painting, Zola
went on to write a book about the fictional prostitute’s rise to fame.
Completed in 1880, it was also titled Nana.
Zola’s novel stands in
great contrast to Manet’s painting. Where Manet was cheeky, Zola was
moralizing; where Manet was observant, Zola was judgmental. The writer
describes Nana at one point as “the Beast of the Scriptures,” whereas “the
painting is really the epitome of art without moral dimension,” Muhlstein
notes. “Manet just shows something, he doesn’t judge.”
Today, Zola’s Nana is read
mostly as a clunky period piece. It’s hard to take his outrage about the
prostitute seriously. Perhaps one reason Manet’s image resonates more strongly
today is because of his sense of empathy—he allowed Nana to be both a powerful
woman and a prostitute, without assigning fear to that concept in the way that
Zola did. He wasn’t afraid to attribute the figure of Nana with real societal
power.
And, as a result,
“prostitutes appeared as real people,” says Muhlstein. “If you take the example
of Nana, there you have a young prostitute, a courtesan, looking at you
straight in the face. She’s a person—you can’t just brush her aside as you
would if you encountered a streetwalker. Suddenly, you’re face to face with
her.”
Although today it hangs
proudly in Hamburg’s Kunsthalle, when the painting was first shown, the
reception was far from friendly. At the time, the art world was more
comfortable with painted nudes featuring a heavy dose of Orientalism. It
certainly wasn’t used to seeing a modern-day courtesan portrayed as a “pretty
girl, practically winking at you, practically making fun of the old man with his
top hat,” notes Muhlstein, whose book The Pen and the Brush explores the
relationship between 19th-century French painters and writers. “The fact that
she looked sympathetic, she looked appealing.…She looks extremely pleased with
herself, and I think that probably was shocking for people.” The French
Academic Salon, the only real path to artistic success in 19th-century France,
rejected the painting from its 1877 exhibition.
Manet nevertheless found a
way to display the work. In lieu of the salon, he hung it in the window of a
trinket shop on the Boulevard des Capucines, one of Paris’s main thoroughfares.
The painting became a popular attraction, toying with the visual pun of a
painted prostitute displayed on the same street real-life prostitutes would frequent
at night…………..
https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-manets-empathetic-painting-parisian-prostitute-resonates-today?utm_medium=email&utm_source=12585603-newsletter-editorial-daily-03-18-18&utm_campaign=editorial&utm_content=st-
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