ÉDOUARD MANETAnother artist who
depicted Parisian nightlife was Édouard Manet,
whose career bridged Realism (see Chapter 30)
and Impressionism. One of his later paintings in
the Impressionist mode is Bar at the Folies-
Bergère (FIG. 31-9). The Folies-Bergère was a
popular café with music-hall performances, one
of the fashionable gathering places for Parisian
revelers that many Impressionists frequented. In
Manet’s 1882 painting, a barmaid, centrally
placed, looks out from the canvas but seems
disinterested or lost in thought, divorced from
her patrons as well as from the viewer. Manet
blurred and roughly applied the brush strokes,
particularly those in the background, and the effects of modeling and
perspective are minimal. This painting method further calls attention
to the surface by forcing the viewer to scrutinize the work to make
sense of the scene. On such scrutiny, visual discrepancies emerge. For
example, what initially seems easily recognizable as a mirror behind the
barmaid creates confusion throughout the rest of the painting. Is the
woman on the right the barmaid’s reflection? If so, it is impossible to
reconcile the spatial relationship among the barmaid, the mirror, the
bar’s frontal horizontality, and the barmaid’s seemingly displaced re-
flection. These visual contradictions reveal Manet’s insistence on call-
ing attention to the pictorial structure of his painting, in keeping with
his modernist interest in examining the basic premises of the medium.
EDGAR DEGASImpressionists also depicted more formal
leisure activities. The fascination Edgar Degas(1834–1917) had with
patterns of motion brought him to the Paris Opéra (FIG. 30-46) and
its ballet school. There, his great observational
power took in the formalized movements of
classical ballet, one of his favorite subjects. In
The Rehearsal (FIG. 31-10), Degas used several
devices to bring the observer into the pictorial
space. The frame cuts off the spiral stair, the
windows in the background, and the group of
figures in the right foreground. The figures are
not at the center of a classically balanced com-
position. Instead, Degas arranged them in a
seemingly random manner. The prominent diagonals of the wall bases
and floorboards carry the viewer into and along the directional lines
of the dancers. Finally, as is customary in Degas’s ballet pictures, a
large, off-center, empty space creates the illusion of a continuous floor
that connects the observer with the pictured figures.
The often arbitrarily cut-off figures, the patterns of light
splotches, and the blurriness of the images in this and other Degas
works indicate the artist’s interest in reproducing single moments.
Further, they reveal his fascination with photography. Degas not
only studied the photography of others but also used the camera to
make preliminary studies for his works, particularly photographing
figures in interiors. Japanese woodblock prints (see “Japonisme,”
page 829) were another inspirational source for paintings such as
The Rehearsal. The cunning spatial projections in Degas’s paintings
probably derived in part from Japanese prints, such as those by
Suzuki Harunobu (FIG. 28-12). Japanese artists used diverging lines31-9Édouard Manet,Bar at the Folies-
Bergère,1882. Oil on canvas, 3 1 4 3 .
Courtauld Institute of Art Gallery, London.
In this painting set in a Parisian café, Manet
called attention to the canvas surface by creating
spatial inconsistencies, such as the relationship
between the barmaid and her apparent reflection
in a mirror.
31-10Edgar Degas,The Rehearsal,
- Oil on canvas, 1 11 2 9 . Glasgow
Art Galleries and Museum, Glasgow (Burrell
Collection).
The arbitrarily cut-off figures, the patterns of
light splotches, and the blurry images in this
work reveal Degas’s interest in reproducing
fleeting moments, as well as his fascination
with photography.
828 Chapter 31 EUROPE AND AMERICA, 1870 TO 19001 ft.1 ft.