MONDAY LECTURES


13 November 2023

Recording

Zoom lecture



All You Ever Wanted to Know About Manet’s Olympia and More…*

A lecture on Edouard Manet’s greatest painting

on show for the first time in the USA

in the Manet/Degas exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

(until 7 Jan. 2024)

with Chris Boïcos


Edouard Manet, Olympia, 1863, Paris, Musée d'Orsay
Edouard Manet, Olympia, 1863, Paris, Musée d'Orsay


Titian, Venus of Urbino, 1538, Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence
Titian, Venus of Urbino, 1538, Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence

Édouard Manet’s Olympia, painted in 1863, was first exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1865. From that moment on it became the most controversial depiction of the female nude in French history. Criticism of the painting was vicious and other than Émile Zola, very few rallied to Manet’s defense.

 

In our lecture we will analyze what caused these vehement reactions to the painting and Manet’s possible or probable intentions in creating and exhibiting it in the Paris of his era. We will see how Olympia remains to this day an extraordinarily evocative picture and how many of the topics of today’s “culture wars” from feminism, sexual exploitation or the legacy of slavery were already present in Manet’s timeless, modern masterpiece.

 

*This lecture was first delivered by Paris Art Studies in April 2021



You will receive the Zoom meeting details as soon as you register for the chosen lecture(s)


Currently on at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Manet / Degas

Recordings of two lectures on the exhibition previously at the Musée d’Orsay

with Chris Boïcos