Tuesday, December 20, 2016

Reasons Why The Oil Painting Olympia By Manet Is Revolutionary

By Timothy Moore


Some of the best paintings were made using oil paint. The most realistic ones were by the great artists from the Renaissance. The subjects for the works made during this era were essentially religious, evolving around concepts with an abundance of cherubs, biblical characters, gods and goddesses.

Venus was a favorite subject especially when portraying nudes. Another notable thing with traditional art is how they are so incredibly life like. Pieces made during this time barely showed brush strokes even when painting using oil, which is a very thick medium. Manet was that one artist that defied all things traditional with his oil painting Olympia.

The thing with late Renaissance art was that it was very heavily rooted to technique and how well it was able to portray anatomy and physics of the objects in the painting. This piece by Manet was essentially a parody of Venus of Urbino, notable for its subject, the goddess Venus laying on a chair like bed in the nude. Nudes then were not at all seen as lewd, but this artwork by Manet was an exception.

One huge reason why this painting caused such an uproar was because he replaced the goddess with a prostitute. Olympia is a common name for a courtesan, a more prominent and highly paid sex worker. To do this was an act of blasphemy in a sense. Manet saw it as honesty that 1865 France did not want to face.

Now you may think this chick was your run off the mill girl, but as you can see she had a servant. This entails that the subject was of a higher position in the job that she holds. The servant also holds a bouquet which seemingly comes from a patron. What shocked people during the era when this work was released was how vulgar the piece was.

The question now remains to be the difference between traditional nudes of Venus versus what Manet made. The goddess was always painted with divine perfection barely showing any flaw and you never really see any of them looking directly at you. Now, with Manet and his prostitute, the discomfort comes from the naked woman looking directly at the viewer.

The rawness and honesty was not welcomed by the its viewers, although its revolutionary nature made the piece an obra maestra. The painter wanted to make sure that there is little visual depth to really emphasize to its viewers that this was artwork and not something you use to blur the lines between what is real and imagination.

The piece is a cross between abstraction and tradition which encouraged modern art. There was lesser pressure to perfection. This is evident on the asymmetry of features you can see on the subject. The detail is essentially on the hands and the feet which seems peculiar, instead of focusing on the bosom and the womb.

Olympia was met with mockery but anything that significantly shook the world is always met with the same manner. To this day the piece is an icon and is a reminder to all artists that use any medium that one can send a powerful message with only relaying an idea or an interpretation of an already existing one. In this case, art was able to achieve the first movements or artistic revolution against how convoluted aesthetic was during the late renaissance.




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