Indifference to Traditional Values
Edouard Manet, The Luncheon on the Grass (1862-63)


The Luncheon on the Grass, 1862 by Edouard Manet
https://www.manet.org/images/gallery/the-luncheon-on-the-grass.jpg

Manet is now called the "father of modern art" and is regarded as one of the most important figures in art history. Because Manet was a change agent who disrupted the thesis of art that had long prevailed, and took it in a different direction (in terms of its emphasis on flatness, Manet's work led to later Cubism, Abstract Expressionism, and even Minimalism).

Before Manet, art was primarily for gods and kings. The hands of the artists who served religious institutions and the court were literally the hands of the gods and the nobility. Manet's hands, however, were different. It changed the art that followed. Here are a few critiques. “Realistic, naturalistic art had dissembled the medium, using art to conceal art; Modernism used art to call attention to art. (omission) Manet's became the first Modernist pictures by the frankness with which they declared the flat surfaces on which they were painted" (Greenberg 1961) [12], “If Manet had lived a little longer, the series of work, even now has not lost its vividness even, makes one wonder if another modern and contemporary art movement might have followed" (Cachin 1994) [13], "it becomes quickly apparent that Manet is unconcerned with creating the illusion of a real-life space, and furthermore, he seems to be in many places trying to purposefully rupture one’s sense of illusion by muddying the relationship between a figure and ground and flattening out parts of the image" (Israel 2014) [14].

In 1863, Manet submitted The Luncheon on the Grass to an exhibition. The "prestigious" Salon de Paris was established in 1648 by the L’Academie royale de peinture et de sculpture in France. However, it was not selected. In the same year, the painting was exhibited at an unsuccessful exhibition organized by the order of Napoleon III, but he was severely criticized. There were two main reasons. First, the work was considered "poorly painted" to begin with. At that time, it was considered important for paintings to be realistic and not to leave brushstrokes. However, as if to expose the deception that "this is not a painting”, Manet's brushstrokes clearly asserted that "this is a painting”. Second, the work was considered a “scandal”. Until then, naked women had been depicted only as mythological or historical themes, and never in the real world as in The Luncheon on the Grass. The location of this painting is a park (Francois Gerard’s painting Psyche and Amor, which was selected for the Salon in 1798, was accepted as a sublime painting that adopted mythology, even though it seems more obscene, vulgar, and inappropriate). The antisociality of doing something dubious outdoors in broad daylight. And disgust (or envy and jealousy toward the urban debauchee?) to Manet, by connecting the eyes of the woman on the left of the painting and the eyes of the viewer, Manet gives people an feeling as if they were also experiencing "the scene”, and makes people imagine "it" even if he or she does not want to. The people were confused and took their confusion out on Manet.

In 1862, Manet told his friend Antonin Proust what could be taken as a criminal warning: "I feel I must paint prostitutes. People will tear me to pieces. But whatever.“ [15] The theme of prostitutes Manet focused on at the time was a dark side of society that should not be ignored. Manet's awareness of the problem is made clear by the pictorial statement, "Look at the reality”. After Manet, "taboo" became one of the conditions of art (and was followed by Van Gogh's "madness," Jean Dubuffet's "outsider," and Richard Hamilton's "pop," the exceptions to art).

Jacques Derrida mentioned in Dissemination like this. [16] “The reason why Plato likens painting to pharmacon is that pharmacon in Greek also means painting. Namely, painting is not a natural color, but a chemical fabric that imitates artificial tones, colors given in things.” Manet's paintings continue to attract people as artificial pharmacon (something both poisonous and medicinal) that are far from mimesis (imitation). Manet is the most important artist in terms of capturing the ARTMIND. Because he has all the fundamentals of the aforementioned ARTMIND. We will look at each ARTMIND through Manet's eyes below.


ARTMIND 1: reversal of good and bad

What is not art becomes art. This is the basis of art history. A structure, something outside of the system becoming embedded within the system, updating and enhancing it, is not limited to art. Just as ex-fraudsters and ex-hackers work as security consultants for the FBI, just as new kinds of terrorist attacks and accidents strengthen security systems and laws, the system is improved by its exceptions and maintains its viability. The exceptions to the 1863 art system were, quite simply, bad things: "to insist on being a painting (to ignore realism and expose its deceptions)" and "to paint a theme that is not sublime (non-idealized reality, prostitutes)." Although he had a few understandable associations with Delacroix, Baudelaire, Mallarme, Monet, and others, many considered Manet "bad art.” But the name of Manet now stands as the foremost example of "good art (it is possible that Manet will become bad art again in another sense, or that now that it has become good art, it is no longer art)”. This reversal of good and evil, "bad art is good art”, often occurs in art history. In a sense that it is a system incorporating the outside, Art is an “exosystem” (ecological system different ftom Bronfenbrenner [17]).


ARTMIND 2: knowing the unknown: awareness of ignorance

Although the unknown confounds and horrifies us, it also holds something that sparks our curiosity and inspires our whole body. Manet opened up the world of the unknown. It is a distortion of space (clearly different when compared to the aforementioned Psyche and Amor). As Francoise Cachin says, "the perspective that has dominated painting since the Renaissance is ignored.” [18] Considering the original title, "Bathing" (retitled “The Luncheon on the Grass" in 1867), we can see that the figure at the back center of the painting was originally important. First of all, this woman is strange. The brushwork in the space around her is “messy". Although the ground behind the woman on the left and the man on the right is connected to the ground, the right side of the painting is more "messy" than the left side. This cluttering occurs in the surroundings of the bathing woman (ground, water, grassland). In contrast, this woman is clearly depicted with the same density as the three in the foreground, even though she is at the far end (if perspective were employed, she would naturally be depicted paler than the three). If one pays attention to these techniques, the bathing woman appears as if she is in a different dimensional space. This intentional distortion is evident in later Cezanne, but Manet already painted another painting within one painting or another reality within one reality. Thus, after Manet, the ARTMIND of "knowing the unknown" became the basis of art (or a traditional value), moving away from the traditional value of repeating myths and history (Although The Luncheon on the Grass references two Renaissance paintings when you compare the two to The Luncheon on the Grass, you will reach further unknown knowledge).


ARTMIND 3: constant transformation

There has been no small number of people, such as Heraclitus and Jonathan Swift, who believed that “something that doesn’t change is to change.” By continually transforming our minds as our environment changes, or by continually changing our environment through the transformation of our minds, humanity has come to this day (it is possible to say that this mindset of constant transformation that brought us stone tools, needles, steam engines, the Internet, etc). Manet brought a change (indifference to traditional values, confronting taboos, crystallizing unprecedented practices of thought and feeling in painting) to long-established conventions. If history had not had Manet, art would still be a painting of angels, and urinals would still be urinals (there may have already been someone like Manet before Manet. There may have already been people like Manet before Manet, who may not have been Homo sapiens, but rather Neanderthal or Paranthropus, or perhaps even not human at all). It is often said that "there is no if in history," but given that history is also in the midst of constant transformation, it can always be overturned, and it can always be changed.

Next, let us look at the ARTMIND from the perspective of ART FOR HUMAN.


[1] Elizabeth Kolbert, The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2014).
[2] [5] Harari, Yuval Noah, 2017 Homo Deus, Vintage
[3] [31] Max Tegmark, LIFE 3.0: being human in the age of Artificial Intelligence (New York: Knopf, 2017).
[4] Virilio, Paul 2002 Ce qui arrive, GaliLee
[6] [44] Harari, Yuval Noah, 2017 Homo Sapiens, Vintage
[7] http://pinnaclepointestate.co.za/caves/
[8] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/19/science/humans-reached-australia-aboriginal-65000-years.html
[9] http://www.anthropocene.info/great-acceleration.php
[10] Lyotard, Jean-Francois 1979 The Postmodern Condition, Les Editions de Minuit
[11] Grant Pooke and Graham Whitham, art history, teach yourself (London: Hodder Education, 2003).
[12] http://www.sharecom.ca/greenberg/modernism.html
[13] [18] Cachin, Francoise 1984 Manet, 1832-1883 Harry N Abrams Inc
[14] https://www.artsy.net/article/matthew-the-first-modern-painting
[15] Courthion, Pierre 1961 Manet, Harry N. Abrams, Inc
[16] Derrida, Jacques 1972 Dissemination The University of Chicago Press
[17] Urie Bronfenbrenner, The Ecology of Human Development: Experiments by Nature and Design (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979).