Olympia by edouard manet4/16/2023 What is meant by this is, where in other paintings of the period the brush strokes would be so smooth and accurate as to be essentially invisible, in ‘Olympia’ Manet uses relatively broad strokes that are left apparent to the viewer. In regard to how he styled the painting, as I mentioned above the standard for the time was naturalism/realism – that is, reproducing real life as accurately as possible– however, in ‘Olympia’ Manet adopts what could be crudely described as a ‘loose’ approach to the painting. The divergence from this standard that Manet took with ‘Olympia’, as mentioned before, is two-fold there is a clear difference in both the way in which he styled his painting and also with how he composed the scene – in particular the model of the painting. ![]() An acknowledgment of this standard of the nude in this period is necessary for understanding how and why ‘Olympia’ had the impact it did. This relationship between the female subject of the painting and the male viewer is reflected in Simone de Beauvoir’s idea of the man/woman relationship being one of subject/object respectively – a complete objectification of a woman with a complete removal her autonomy and agency. ![]() In terms of the subject matter, the female nude was an extremely common focus of paintings among the fine art community and following along with the stylistic ‘rules’ of the period, these nudes would be as accurate depictions of a real life human – almost exclusively a woman – as possible, posed in such a way that has been heavily argued to be one of submission to the ‘male gaze’. These works were what is classed as realism or naturalism – paintings that attempt to emulate real life as closely as possible. At the time of Manet’s painting, Paris was at the cultural centre of the world, and the high society art critics of the time worshipped the works of Italian renaissance painters such as Raphael and Michelangelo. It is of benefit when analysing the elements of ‘Olypmia’ to view them in a historical context.
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