Zihona:Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe
本页为 林爽的技术笔记本 之一部分。
Frequently asked questions on this painting
Why was the painting regarded as "shocking"?
The reason why this painting is regarded like “shocking” could have something to do with its disturbance to the conventional cognizance and art tropism. It changes all the rules of arts. People love to see some stories from paintings provided that they are reasonable. But people fail to find any clue on that for it’s neither from mythology nor historical events. What is worse, there is no eye contact or perceivable communications among the four persons. There are little reasonable gradual changes of colors and the woman at the back as well as all the trees as background seem to be in a wrong size from normal perspective. He also used the broad "photographic" light, which gave no shadows. Also the lighting of the scene is inconsistent and unnatural. It depicts a picnic on the grass, but the hat the man wears is normally an indoor one. Generally it is thought that the bigger the topic, the bigger the canvas size should be. Thus people do not think it necessary to picture a picnic in such grand dimension. The fruit on the ground are of different seasons and they seem not to be well prepared and ready to eat. In short, it is strange, outrageous but quite humorous to most conservative audience.
Since copying was a major part of the training of a young artist in the mid-19th century, Edouard Manet would have been a regular visitor to the museums and art galleries in Paris. In painting Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe, do you think he may have been influenced by earlier works? Consider in particular Giorgione's Concert Champêtre and Marc-Antonio Raimondi's Judgment of Paris.
He might have got that idea of painting female nude and well dressed men together from Concert Champêtre. And he might also be influenced by the section at the right bottom of The Judgment of Paris where there were one female sitting on the left and two males sitting in the middle and on the right. The female is facing us and the man on the right is pointing to the man in the middle but without any eye contact. The placement of the three characters in Manet’s painting is very similar to the former one.
Does this "borrowing" or "copying" from earlier works constitute plagiarism?
I would rather say that Manet was enlightened by those paintings than to judge that it constitutes plagiarism. Plagiarism always refers to the copyright infringement, but Manet might simply get some new and good ideas for his own paintings based on some old topics. We can not say that Manet was lacking knowledge and understanding of painting or under big pressure so he copied others’ works. On the contrary, Manet’s Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe is a shocking one which changed all the rules of arts. It’s a brand new way of painting with his adventurous and uncommon ideas.
Another painting featuring a nude (Alexandre Cabanel's The Birth of Venus) had been accepted for the 1863 Salon and was in fact purchased by the Emperor Napoleon III. What makes Manet's nude so different?
The classical nudes can be called as “hypercritical nudes”, with smooth skin, charming shape but no pubes. And the lighting of the scene could make the nudes more vivid and beautiful. However, what Manet painted is not an ideal beauty at all. It shows a natural nude using "photographic" light with unnecessary flesh at the belly, say, a real model in the world but no longer flawless Venus or faeries.
X-ray analysis reveals that the clothes discarded by the nude woman were not originally included. Why do you think Manet added the discarded clothes?
Classical nudes are genuinely without clothes. Manet might want to continue the way of depicting nudes without any clothes but later found out that it could be more reasonable to add some discarded clothes for that naked woman to be better posed like a modern one for she was no longer a classical and flawless nude.
In Manet's Déjeuner sur l'herbe edited by Paul Hayes Tucker, John House draws attention to an element of the painting that most people overlook: in the lower left-hand corner is a small green frog. Other than the fact that one might expect to see a frog in a riverside setting, do you think there is any other reason why Manet put the frog in the painting?
Interesting as it was, frog was considered as the token of prostitute at that time. Manet died of untreated syphilis which was not possible to be infected by his wife Suzanne Leenhoff. He might mean to show that the naked woman was a prostitute or to show that he also enjoyed himself inevitably with those prostitutes.
Contemporary sculptor, J. Seward Johnson, has created a three-dimensional version of Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe, claiming that it adds power to the original. Do you agree?
I am afraid I cannot agree with that saying. It might be a good try, but my gut feeling tells me that it is some kind of wretched sequel to a fine work. Instead of adding power to the original one, it destroys all the mysteries, boldness and essence of it. Manet was able to draw something that changed the rules of normal perspective, and he could also change the ways of using light and shadow. But the sculptor will never be able to create the three-dimensional version in a wrong perspective with wrong lighting in the real world, no matter how hard he tries. Thus the sculptor is limited in the real world, but Manet, as a painter, was definitely not. There is also a frog model on the grass, which is quite obvious and funny to see, but unfortunately it eliminates all the unperceivable, humorous and sarcastic sense in the original one.