Summary Of The Painting Olympia By Manet

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Nude figures have been featured in art works since around 30 to 25,000 B.C. And throughout the history of art, we can see a lot of artists being inspired and influenced by great talents before them, in one way or another they would carry the style or ideas of those previous artists into their own art and create new masterpieces. One particular example is Édouard Manet’s Olympia from the Realism period, and Yasumasa Morimura’s Futago. The two paintings share great similarities in their composition, but the content and purpose of the paintings, and style wise the two pieces are very different.

“People can take what they like out of the work”-Saville (YouTube, 2017). The female nude is one of the most prominent themes in the history of art and has been subject for many masterpieces such as botticelli's The Birth of Venus and Manet’s Le Dejeuner sur I’herbe. Saville's treatment of the female nude is undeniably like no other from the centuries before her.

Kousser, Rachel. "Creating the past: The Venus de Milo and the Hellenistic reception of classical Greece." American journal of archaeology (2005): 227-250.

The main focus of the painting intended by Titian is a nude woman, Venus, looking straightforwardly at the audience. The young woman’s nipples are erect; with her left hand covers her pubic area, the sexuality of this painting is unquestionable. She is completely naked except for the ring on her little finger and the bracelet around her wrist. It is clear that the intention of this painting is to evoke sensual feelings in its audience.

Reclining nude female is a common subject matter in art history since the Venetian Renaissance, Titian’s Venus of Urbino painted in 1538 is one of the earliest reclining nude female in painting history. It described a beautiful young female laying on her bed with her sleeping dog, on the back ground is her maids looking for cloth or her in the cassone. Manet’s Olympia that painted in 1865 is a painting with a similar composition, A nude young female who was suggested a prostitute, behind her is her black female maid holding a big bouquet of flower which is possibly from her customer. On the same part of the composition, there is an animal as well, but this time it is a cat. Titian and Manet’s reclining nude female have a same composition and subject matter, however They are very different in art history, both stylistically and culturally.

Even though some artists, as Berger claims, tried to resist this tradition, they couldn’t overcome the cultural tradition of female objectification that has continued to the present. These artists failed to create a different view in culture because of the media and how the perception wouldn’t change in the eyes of men. One famous artist who tried to resist this awful trend was an artist name Rubens. In his portrait of his second wife, the painting named Helene Fourment in a Fur Coat, he tried to portray the same message with a different image.The image is of a women with no other clothing other than a fur coat looking shameful. The middle-aged looking women in the painting was wearing a big brown fur coat. The difference between a regular “nude”

The painting was rejected by the official French academy in 1863 because it left the salon jury outraged to how the woman is being shown in the nude with no shame at all. Although nude women had always been the subject of classical art the problem here was that she was being depicted as a normal human being. Her body posture seemed relaxed, by slouching it also creates folds on her stomach. The salon did not approve as she was displayed as a regular modern day woman who happened to take her clothes off (you can see her polka dotted dress and hat towards her left) rather than a goddess or mythological creature. Another problem they had was that she is looking directly into the viewer’s eyes with confidence and self-awareness to which people were not

The reading claims that nudes throughout artistic history have been an important source of beauty and controversy. Nudes began to spike during the Baroque period as they were used for the more expressive and emotional arts of the time. In the nineteenth century, nudes became more common, yet became more sensitive. Artists would train by drawing nudes of ancient Greek statues and figures from myth. However, many artists would then move on to create works depicting prostitutes or peasant naked women. This would not please patrons as they were extremely societally taboo. However, this did not start artists from making them, as they moved into the twentieth and twenty-first century. This shows the importance of artistic nudes and their impact

The focus of the painting is a woman in bright yellow. This woman stands above the crowd, showing only her back and a hunched figure. Her posture suggests that she is shy, self conscious and is afraid of the spotlight that she suddenly finds herself in. Her head is bowed which hides her face and deters us from seeing her identity. She looks as if she carries a great burden on her shoulders. She shares her pedestal with another woman in red who is smirking and confidently showing herself off. She, unlike the other woman, displays herself to be seen by all. She leans against the building behind her, her arm thrown to the side, which opens up her posture. Her confidence is worn as easily as her revealing

Artist and people viewing the art work have always had a fascination with the female nude. Even when I was a child my attention was captured by the nude art not because I was a kid and I saw a nude lady , but it forced me to wonder more about why the female nude was so amazing as a tool for art and why this is repeated so many times throughout the centuries. One female nude painting in particular was the subject of controversy and exposed the syncretism and or the power of the female nude painting.

The art world has been host to a vast menagerie of talent, intellect, and creativity for about as long as human culture has existed. It has grown, developed, and changed just as humanity has. Naturally, with such an impressively expansive history, various avenues of art are visited time and time again by new artists. Artists seek not only to bring their own personal flavor and meaning to timeless concepts, but to find new ways to approach them. While not every single creator and craftsman can make such a great impact on art or the world, their efforts have given birth to some truly magnificent and unique works. In an effort to create a more meaningful understanding, as well a deeper appreciation, of the nuances, techniques, and design choices employed in these attempts, a comparison will be made between Edouard Vuillard’s Interior With a Screen (1909-1910) and Henri Matisse’s Blue Nude (Souvenir of Biskra) (1907). In this essay, each artist’s approach to the subject of the female nude will be closely analyzed, compared, and contrasted, as will their styles of painting, handling of visual elements, and their use of the principles of design. An interpretation of each work and what the artist intended when creating it will also be provided.

In many works of art throughout history, female breasts have been featured prominently and in the nude. The symbolic meaning credited to the breast was usually associated with fertility and nourishment, both spiritual and physical, and in the wider sense, with life. Eroticism, nourishment, abundance, expression, feminine power, as well as feminine subservience, are different contradicting themes of the breast played out in time.

Her naked form is a very rare element in the picture. During this time period, nudity was strictly reserved to convey the idea of pure innocense or virginal qualities. Yet, Botticelli uses the nudity to symbolize innocence and the untouched skin. Her form is soft and womanly and the seashell that she rides on also reflects the thought that she is unblemished and untouched, much like a pearl. Her hair is speckled with fine gold and is flowing naturally. It also serves to naturally cover her naked body and suggest an innocent and almost Eve like quality. This also is a deliberate attempt at recreating art from earlier Greek works which embraced the natural beauty of the body, especially amongst the gods and goddesses of ancient Greece.

Nicolas Geoffrey Lemprière Hammond, otherwise known as N.G.L. Hammond, was a professor of Greek University of Cambridge (N.G.L. Hammond: Professor…). He was born on November 15th, 1907 and died March 21st, 2001 (N.G.L. Hammond Bio…). He has written multiple books including his first book A History of Greece to 322 B.C.E., Alexander the Great: King, Commander, and Statesman and a three-volume collection titled