The gears are turning at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Manhattan in preparation for a joint investigation into the intertwined careers of French Impressionist painters Édouard Manet and Edgar Degas, who were considered enemies. The exhibition Manet/Degasorganized in collaboration with and currently exhibited at Orsay Museum in Parisexamines the strained relationship between the two artists through more than 160 works of art, including Manet’s “Olympia” (1863), which will travel to New York – and the United States – for the very first time at the end of September, when the exhibition is scheduled to open at the Met.
Manet and Degas had a strange relationship that was plagued by both mutual influence and antagonism. Born only three years apart, the two artists would have first met at the Louvre in the early 1860s and bonded over a shared fascination with a portrait of Diego Velázquez before they began moving in the same circles. The eldest artist, Manet, achieved artistic success earlier than Degas and was accepted into the Paris Salon in 1861 with his painting “Spanish singer” (1860). Manet continued to push the boundaries and was finally rejected from the Salon in 1863 for “Le Déjeuner dans l’herbe” (1863), which showed a nude woman accompanied by clothed men in a pastoral landscape, leading him to create the Salon Refusals that year. and compensate for the academic prestige of the official Salon. This stunt along with the aforementioned painting catapulted Manet into notoriety, drawing criticism for its “indecent” subject matter. Outraged responses to “Lunch in the Grass” gave way to Manet’s “L’Olympia,” seen as an even more direct confrontation of French culture and economy.
A major work in the history of art, “Olympia” is inspired by the famous “Venus of Urbino” (1534) by Titian. Manet’s titular subject was a sex worker, a fact which, unsurprisingly, scandalized the audience at the 1865 Salon where it was first presented. Visitors reportedly tried to destroy the painting, horrified by Olympia’s direct gaze and the way her hands were rendered, that at least one critic similar to rubber. More recent studies have drawn attention to a figure largely overlooked by critics at the time – Laure, the maid behind Olympia – and how black women are often relegated to anonymity in the history of art.
Degas did not exhibit at the Official Salon until 1865, when his painting “Scene of War in the Middle Ages” (1865) was accepted by the jury, even though it received little attention. As he continued to show his work through the Salon for the next five years, Degas would was inspired by the success of Manet and influence on the French artistic sphere at the time and pivoted his practice from historical analyzes to observations and appreciations of French art and culture, leading him to find ballet dancers as his muse.
The two artists remained friends, albeit tumultuously, throughout the development of Impressionism. Although there is little written evidence to support their friendship, the exhibition features four drawings of Manet by Degas coupled with one of Manet’s paintings of Degas and his wife, Suzanne, whom Degas allegedly lacerated .
“Their artistic output speaks volumes about how these major artists defined themselves with each other,” exhibition co-curator Stephan Wolohojian said in a statement. “This extensive exhibit of records is a unique chance to assess their fascinating relationship through a dialogue between their works.”
