Culture Corner: Le déjeuner sur l'herbe

Édouard Manet, Luncheon on the Grass, 1863

This piece, by one of the great masters of the later nineteenth century, is one of the most visually arresting pieces I can think of. Not only is it interestingly executed, but the subject matter leaves many questions and hints to numerous possible interpretations.

My favorite way of thinking of this painting is to conceive of it as a photograph in oil paint. The latter half of the nineteenth century saw something of a revolution in the way that images are created. Some of it stemmed from the Realist movement, in which artists sought to eschew previous subjects -- gods, classical antiquity, religious themes, historic events, monarchs -- to focus on the reality of everyday life. The most noted Realist is Gustave Courbet, whose the The Stonebreakers is considered an exemplar of the genre. In this enormous canvas, the dimensions of which were usually only reserved for grand, epic subjects, Courbet painted two men breaking rocks with hammers. Not exactly exciting stuff, but it served something of a political purpose by rhetorically asking, "Why do we glorify men who have achieved greatness only through birth, when there are everyday heroes like these laborers?" Along with Realism, some of the image revolution came from the invention of the camera. With this contraption, "reality" no longer had to be filtered through the eye, the mind, and the hand of the artist; rather, people could get a firsthand account of events as they happened. Such a novel approach created something of a vogue for "real life" that both fueled the Realist painters and the Impressionists as well as much of what constituted urban life in the latter nineteenth century (where going to the city morgue was considered a fun family outing).

Luncheon on the Grass stylistically takes something from these parallel developments. For one, the lighting is completely strange. As opposed to a natural light, which one would get from lunching in the park, the characters appear brightly lit as if from an artificial source beyond our view. Notice, the characters do not cast shadows, nor are there really any shadows in the picture at all. Likewise, the positions of the characters are strange. They seem posed and artificial -- not like a group sharing a picnic at all, but more like mannequins holding the places where actual people should be. The overall effect is to give something of a muddled impression of the "reality" of the scene. Is it staged? Does the photographer really represent life as it is, or does the camera, in fact, lie depending on the operator?

Of course, the most noticeable feature of the painting has nothing to do with lighting or posing, but rather the totally nude woman sitting front and center. Some people have pointed to this as being a possible reference to the rampant prostitution that existed in many Parisian parks in this period. This seems a little too simplistic to me, though. I mean, it is broad daylight, and the rest of the scene hardly suggests "prostitution." Indeed, there is nothing sensual about this painting at all. Notice that the two men do not pay any attention to the woman sitting stark naked in front of them (nor to the semi-clad woman in the water behind them). Even the food, which in many instances represents sensuality, is something of an afterthought. It is not being consumed, it merely lay tossed aside, a remnant of an afternoon's activities. Perhaps the state of disarray of the food suggests a tryst that has already happened, but again the rest of the scene does not suggest this -- the men are fully clothed, the woman appears bored, and there is nothing even remotely sexy about the scene.

I don't think this painting is about sex in the conventional way. I think it is meant to suggest something about Victorian models of respectability. The nude woman is obviously a breach of bourgeois morality in her stark nudity; the men completely ignoring her upholds the idea of masculine restraint. Perhaps Manet is questioning a social structure that tells men to uphold an impossible ideal, such that they ignore a completely beautiful naked woman for the sake of each others' company. In this, perhaps Manet is suggesting something of a homosocial/homosexual undertone -- that bourgeois morality is, in fact, dandifying and emasculating the true nature of male sociability.

Anyway, the overall effect is somewhat disconcerting, and that's what draws me to it. Any art that raises more questions than it gives is good art in my book.