Manet at the Movies

Hollywood has brought us many blockbusters, headliners, 3D movies (most recently, Jurassic Park!), opera, and now Art!  A new exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts, London presented Manet: Portraying Life.  The exhibition paralled with a movie presentation that I saw last Thursday.

Tim Marlow, the host, guided people through a semi-documentary, semi-exhibition on Manet's portraits from several collections.  The best contributor to the film, and exhibition, was curator, MaryAnne Stevens, Director of Academic Affairs, Royal Academy of Arts.  She gave wonderful and accurate insights to the techniques and qualities of Manet's work.

"The Father of Modernity" was truly an innovator, and also distinctly not an Impressionist.  Slightly older than Degas and Monet, Manet didn't fully embrace new techniques in painting, such as his continual use of black within his canvases.  Manet liked to appeal to the bourgeoisie class developing in the late 19th century Paris, he also socialized and theorized with many of the Impressionists around the suburbs of the main city.  Having died in his early 50s he painted less than 100 paintings in his lifetime.  The remarkable feature of his work are his snapshots or glances of the urban life through his paintings, and most importantly, the ambiguity, the abstraction of motives and narratives with his figures.