PROLOGUElenging the three-dimensional construction of space devised by optical
perspective. Through an ambiguous play of reflections, Manet fragmented
centuries of solid spatial representation on canvas, destabilizing the
sovereignty of the viewer and at the same time exposing the grim social
realities of alienation at the margin of the burgeoning entertainment
industry in Paris. Manet made painting painful—he turned the classical
tradition of representational affirmation on its head, reconfiguring the
medium as a questioning entity. This is where modern art begins.
But not all impressionist artists assimilated Manet’s lesson to the same
extent. Of course, in a sense, impressionism was a bourgeois affair. Most
of its exponents were of middle or upper-class extraction; with the excep-
tion of Mary Cassatt and Berthe Morisot, they were all white men; and
some artists courted professional success by painting the everyday lives
of those who could afford to pay for their works. Indeed, Monet’s body of
work, although groundbreaking in many other ways, never quite embodied
FIGURE P.2 Edouard Manet, A Bar at the Folies-Bergère, 1882. Oil on canvas. 96 × 130
cm. The Courtauld Gallery, London. The Samuel Courtauld Trust.