Visual Analysis of Mary Cassatt and Edouard Manet - Essay Example

College Visual Art analysis and discussion 18 April Visual art analysis and discussion Mary Cassatt and Edouard Manet were two of themost prolific impressionists painters of the French nineteenth century. However regardless of the same art movement and subjects of their art.The differences between them are huge. Manet’s “Olympia” and Cassatt’s “mother and child” are proof of this. They both depict women but both are as different as day and night in the treatment and presentation of the female form. Visual analysis of both the works shows major differences. In Cassatt’s work, she uses very light colours and avoiding black producing a very romantic painting that depicts a mother and child. In Manet’s works, he disregards what was the dictum of impressionism by his characteristic use of black. Both artists are working from a Japanese style of design and perspective which according to many reports heavily influenced their paintings. According to pbs.org, Manet’s paints his forms quickly in rough brushstrokes clearly visible on the surface of the canvas. Instead of the carefully constructed perspective that leads the eye deep into the space of the painting, Manet offers a picture frame flattened into two planes. The foreground is the glowing white body of Olympia on the bed; the background is darkness. (Edouard Manet’s Olympia). The treatment of the subject matter is very different in both paintings. According to pbs.org, Manet chooses to paint a woman of his time -- not a feminine ideal, but a real woman, and a courtesan at that.(Edouard Manet’s Olympia).This woman is a self-assured prostitute and view of the public of the nineteenth century a scandalous painting which would have been destroyed by the public as reported by many people. According to the Guardian, “The subject matter is sensational - a nude who, in the eyes of 19th-century observers, was clearly a prostitute, in her trashy mules with a bootlace for a necklace, tucked in, to the ruffled white pillows and her skin is a bright, glaring white. The fully dressed black servant is featured, presenting her with flowers from one of her male companions.”(Olympia, Edouard Manet).In viewing the painting the prostitute clearly has a defiant and confrontational look which according to the Guardian, it is impossible to know whether her mood is one of melancholy or contempt.( Olympia Edouard Manet(1863)) On the other hand, Cassatt’s mother and child are much more easier and pleasurable to view. The “mother and child” clearly depict the intimate love and bond between a mother and her child. According to Danielle Peltakian, “she painted in delicate brush strokes of pastel pigments typical of the style of Renoir and Degas. She created a romantic depiction of the female figure reminiscent of the early Italian renaissance Madonna and child”( American member of the french impressionists school:note print maker.) According to tfaoi.com, The mother in the painting exudes a sense of dignity and purpose that challenges conventional notions of decorative femininity.(Mary Cassat, Modern woman).According to Anne Higonet, Cassatt made the experience of tiny children's bodies a visceral pleasure, both for the mothers represented within her pictures and for us, the viewers of the pictures(Two ways of thinking about Cassatt).She goes further in explaining that Cassatt's picture joins the forms of mother and child. The integrity of the individual body, which we could also call its isolation, is replaced by a formal fiction of merged bodies. Cassatt engages us in the joys of infant flesh. (Two ways of thinking about Cassatt). In comparing the two pictures by Cassatt and Manet, the differences in depiction of women is immense. In manet’s Olympia, the woman is depicted as an object, while in Cassatt’s Mother and child the woman is a subject. Mary Cassatt depicted the modern woman of the Paris. A feminist perspective of her work pervades most of the explanation and analysis of her work which describe her as expressing her feminism through painting. According to Chloe Pantazi, “Cassatt’s women are mothers bathing their babies, or perhaps single women seen at their toilettes, writing letters, getting ready to leave the house, as well as women of different ages in more arranged poses sitting for a portrait”.( reconsidering the women of impression, the prints of Mary Cassat).Analysis by cassatart.com further solidifies this view by explaining that her paintings display Cassatt’s views of the treatment of women and her opposition to male mediated society. They go on to further state that her paintings elevated the status of women, displaying them as the spectator rather than the spectacle. The women of her paintings are subjects, not objects, people to be seen and understood, not just lusted after. Her paintings are thus summarised as paintings about women, not of them.( cassat, feminism and the canvas).According to tfaoi.com, Cassatt recognized the moral strength that women and children derived from their essential and elemental bond, a unity Cassatt would never tire of representing. Cassatt was sensitive to a more progressive attitude toward women and children and displayed it in her art as well as in her private comments.( Mary Cassat modern woman).According to Anne Higonet, in Cassatt’s mother and child, neither the mother's body nor the child's has its own boundary, its own space. Instead, the figures of mother and child share a border. She goes on to explain that Cassatt reinforces the impression of unity by turning two figures into one shape. She explains that the visual concept of maternity is a physical bond and are engaged only in mutual absorption. Anne Higonet agrees that the pleasure is mutual, yet not quite reciprocal. It is always the children who wear little or no clothing, never the mothers. Even by the decorous standards of Cassatt's time, her women are covered and concealed(two ways of thinking about Mary Cassatt). This is in clear contrast to what is depicted by Manet’s Olympia. Regardless of Manet’s rebellion of the art establishment, his treatment of the female form according to Anne Higonet is that it is the more common countless adult female nudes who signal their sanction of our gaze. They are objects of desire. (two ways of thinking about Mary Cassatt).According to muse-orsay.fr, “Venus has become a prostitute, challenging the viewer with her calculating look. This profanation of the idealized nude, the very foundation of academic tradition, provoked a violent reaction.”(Edouard Manet’s Olympia).This statement is further compounded by Jonathan jones of the guardian who states that “The source is Titian's Venus of Urbino (1538) whose gaze is unambiguously inviting. Olympia is a travesty of this. Reproducing the recumbent nude on drapery on a bed, Manet replaces details - the loyal sleeping dog in the Titian painting becomes Olympia's startled cat; Venus's braids become Olympia's tied hair. Where everything in Titian is soft, everything in Olympia's world is hard and cold.”(Edouard Manet’s Olympia).Manet according to Dr Beth Gersh-Nesic, He, Manet, invented subjects that set the Parisians’ teeth.(Edouard Manet’s Olympia).This explanation is further enhanced by pbs.org’s description of what Manet did and what he painted. They state that “in painting reality as he sees it, Manet challenges the accepted function of art in France, which is to glorify history and the French state, and creates what some consider the first modern painting. His model, Victorine Meurent, is depicted as a courtesan, a woman whose body is a commodity. While middle-and- upper class gentlemen of the time may frequent courtesans and prostitutes, they do not want to be confronted with one in a painting gallery. A real woman, flaws and all, with an independent spirit, stares out from the canvas, confronting the viewer, something French society in 1865 is perhaps not ready to face.”(Edouard Manet’s Olympia). In the current American context, depictions by both Cassat and Manet are varied and might be perhaps similar to French nineteenth century’s reactions to the paintings. The mother and child are widely respected and to those women who uphold such dignity and love for their children and express the physical bond and pleasure in children, is more than a joy to the society. This does not mean however that the women and children are objects or property as viewed before the suffrage movement, but self-assured subjects with their own individuality. As to the Manet depiction of the nineteenth century French courtesan or more appropriately prostitute, the rife spread of the notion of eroticism and women as objects is pervaded and compounded by the intense uptake of pornographic material and the more than publicized strip clubs and ease of availability of call girls. Manet’s picture will not so much as make a stir in today’s American culture as it did in French nineteenth century culture. In the case of the nude woman, it will more or less just raise an eyebrow. The case of the black servant will nonetheless be met with much atrocity and contempt from the African American community and might ofcourse lead to outrage similar to the one in Paris when Manet’s Olympia was first presented to the public. Works cited Peltakian,Danielle. “American member of the french impressionist school:note print maker” Sulivan Goss 2011.Web. 18 April 2013. Higonet,Anne. “two ways of thinking about Mary Cassat”.Publishing.cdlib.n.d. Web 18 April 2013. Pantazi,Chloe.”reconsidering the women of impression,the prints of mary cassat”.Flavorwire.29 March 2013.Web 18 April 2013 N.a. “Mary Cassat modern woman”.Tfaoi n.d.Web 18 April 2013. N.a “Cassat,feminism and the canvas” Cassattart.8m. n.d. Web 18 April 2013. N.a “Edouard Manet’s Olympia 1865” Pbs. N.d Web 18 April 2013. Gersh-Nesic,Beth Dr. “Edouard Manet’s Olympia” SmartHistory. N.d.Web 18 April 2013. Jones,Jonathan. “ Olympia,Edouard Manet(1863)” TheGuardian 20 April 2002.Web 18 April 2013. N.a “Edouard Manet Olympia” Musee-Orsay.fr n.d Web 18 April 2013. Read More