“This Olympia is a sort of female gorilla, a grotesque in India rubber outlined in black, apes on a bed, in a state of complete nudity, the horizontal attitude of Titian’s Venus: the right arm rests on the body in the same fashion, except for the hand, which is flexed in a sort of shameless contraction.”
Titian, Venus of Urbino, Oil on Canvas, Uffizi, Florence, 1538.
Olympia, the Venus of Paris, 1863…
“Why the devil is that big red woman in chemise called Olympia?”
“Perhaps it’s the name of the cat.”
The expression on the face is that of a premature and vicious creature ; the body, the colour of which reminds one of meat that has hung for too long, is reminiscent of the horror of the Morgue. A hideous negress dressed in pink is holding on her side the bouquet of a doubtful allegory, whilst a black cat arching his back comes and prints the unequivocal trace of the place in which he treaded with his paws on the sheet.
Caricature of Saartjie Baartman, called the "Hottentot Venus"
That Hottentot Venus with a black cat, exposed completely naked on her bed like a corpse on the counters of the morgue, this Olympia from the rue Mouffetard [a notorious haunt of prostitution at the time], dead of yellow fever and already arrived at an advanced state of decomposition.
“A skeleton dressed in tight-fitting tunic of plaster.”
“the crowd thronging in front of the putrefied Olympia as if it were at the morgue.”
Theophile Gautier, by Nadar.
With some repugnance I come to the peculiar paintings by Manet. It is awkward to discuss them, but they cannot be passed by in silence. . . . Many people think it is enough to pass them by and laugh, but that is a mistake. Manet is not without importance; he has a school, he has admirers, even fanatic followers; his influence extends further than is generally realized. M. Manet has the honor of being a danger. But now the danger is passed.
Olympia is inexplicable from any point of view even taken for what she is, a puny model stretched out on a sheet. The color of the flesh is dirty, the modeling non-existent. The shadows are indicated by more or less large smears of blacking. What’s to be said of the negress who brings a bouquet of flowers in a paper, or the black cat that leaves its muddy footprints on the bed? We would still excuse the ugliness were there only some truth in it, some careful study, heightened by some splendid effect of color. Even the least pretty woman has bones, muscles, skin and some sort of color. Here there is nothing, we are sorry to say, but the desire to attract…
Manet, Olympia, 1863.
The “august jeune fille” is a courtesan, with dirty hands and wrinkled feet; she is lying down, wearing one Turkish slipper and a red cockade in her hair; her body has the livid tint of a cadaver displayed in the morgue; her outlines are drawn in charcoal and her greenish, bloodshot eyes appear to be provking the public, protected all the while by a hideous Negress.
All is drawn with coal all around and soft soap in the middle.
No, never has anything so… strange been hung on the walls of an art exhibition.
This is a blog set in 1865 during the great Paris Salon where Edouard Manet’s painting Olympia was causing an uproar. The Public Reaction The violent and intense reaction by the Parisian critics and public was overwhelming – the reaction so great that the cornucopia of criticisms and insults rained ... Continue reading
