Annotated Mona Lisa, The - Strickland, Carol [53]
Manet, “Olympia,” 1863, Musée d‘Orsay, Paris. Manet’s “Olympia” also caused a public outcry. With her bold, appraising stare and individualized features, this was obviously no idealized goddess but a real person. One critic called her a “female gorilla. ” Others attacked Manet’s nonacademic technique: “The least beautiful woman has bones, muscles, skin, and some form of color. Here there is nothing. ” “The shadows are indicated, ” another wrote, “by large smears of blacking.” Most considered the painting’s sexuality immoral: “Art sunk so low does not even deserve reproach. ” Huge crowds flocked to the Salon to see what the fuss was about. After the canvas was physically attacked, it was hung out of reach, high above a doorway. One viewer complained, “You scarcely knew what you were looking at — a parcel of nude flesh or a bundle of laundry. ” Manet became the acknowledged leader of the avant-garde because of “Olympia’s” succès de scandale.
Rivers, “I Like Olympia in Blackface,” 1970, Centre Pompidou, Paris. New York painter Larry Rivers, born in 1923, was a member of the generation following Abstract Expressionism that challenged abstract art’s dismissal of realism and developed Pop art. Rivers combined the free, vigorous brushstrokes of Abstract Expressionism with subject matter from diverse sources ranging from advertising to fine art. Color, not subject matter, according to Rivers, “is what has meaning. ” His version of Manet’s “Odalisque” gives a fresh face to a centuries-old concept.
AMERICAN NEOCLASSICISM
The founding of the American republic coincided with the popularity of Neoclassicism. Since the ancient Roman republic seemed an apt model, the new country clothed itself in the garb of the old. It adopted Roman symbols and terms like “Senate” and “Capitol” (originally a hill in ancient Rome). For a century, official buildings in Washington were Neoclassic knock-offs.
The fact that Neoclassic became the style was mostly due to Thomas Jefferson, an amateur architect. He built the University of Virginia as a learning lab of Classicism. The ensemble included a Pantheon-like Rotunda and pavilions in Roman temple forms. Jefferson used Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian orders to demonstrate the various styles of architecture to students.
In sculpture, antique figures in an idealized, Classical style were also the rage. One of the most acclaimed works of the nineteenth century was Hiram Powers’s “Greek Slave” (1843), a marble statue of a naked girl in chains that won international fame. Horatio Greenough applied Neoclassical doctrines less successfully. The practical American public laughed at his statue of a bewigged George Washington with a nude torso and Roman sandals.
The first American-born painter to win international acclaim was Benjamin West (1738-1820), whose work summed up the Neoclassic style. He was so famous for battle scenes that he became president of the British Royal Academy and was buried in St. Paul’s Cathedral. West spent his entire career in England, and his London studio was a mandatory stop for visiting American painters.
“The Peale Family,” 1770-1773, New-York Historical Society.
Peale: The Leonardo of the New World. Charles Willson Peale (1741-1827) was a model Enlightenment man. A scientist as well as artist who was unfailingly curious and energetic, his list of skills and interests rivaled Leonardo’s. He came to painting through craftsmanship and was a saddler watchmaker, silversmith, and upholsterer before becoming the most fashionable portraitist in the colonies. Peale was also a Revolutionary war soldier, politician, and ingenious inventor. He conceived a new type of spectacles, porcelain false teeth, a steam bath, and a stove that consumed its own smoke. He was also first to excavate a mastodon skeleton, which he exhibited in the natural history museum he founded in Philadelphia with more than 100,000