archives

Manet – revealing too much about us

Manet - Olympia

The questions asked by this painting when it was first displayed are still relevant today. A naked woman, propped up on a bed with a man holding flowers behind her. Is it the look in her eyes, the searching into our morals, our ideas about nakedness, intrigue. Is it the way in which she sits unmoving, unemotionally knowing that her body is beautiful, an object of desire and demand. Is it because there is no artistic ambiguity, she is so immediate, there is nothing to distract us from her nakedness, and our response to her nakedness. Or is it because she shows no desire for the male viewer. We may want her body, but she has no interest, she is beyond us, beyond any suggestion that anything we can do to her, we can in no way interest or satisfy her.