[MUSIC PLAYING] NARRATOR: Thanks to Wix for
supporting PBS Digital Studios. This is a painting of a
woman tending bar in Paris during the latter half
of the 19th century. We know it was painted by
French impressionist Edouard Manet in 1882 during the
storied Belle Epoque, a time of relative
stability in France after over a century of
revolution and conflict, after Paris had been transformed
from a crowded labyrinth of winding streets to a modern
city with new train terminals and straight, wide boulevards. We know that it's set at the
Folies Bergere, a Paris cafe concert, where you could get
a drink and be entertained. And we know Manet's model,
Suzon, actually worked at the Folies Bergere, but posed
for the artist at his studio. But there's a heck of
a lot we don't know. We don't know why we can see a
man in the mirror behind her, but not where he should be
in the space in front of her. We don't know what their
relationship is, whether he's trying to buy a
drink or her, and we don't know what's going
on inside of her head behind the blank stare. Is she just a person as
unreadable from the outside as any other, or is
she a potent symbol of the estrangement of modern
life, a kind of life where we witness and are part of the
grand spectacle of capitalism and entertainment so central
to our existence today? Let's better know A Bar
at the Folies Bergere. Manet unveiled his painting
at the Paris Salon of 1882 among works like Alfred
Philippe Roll's depiction of the first official
celebration of Bastille Day. It was at the salon that new
mostly safe academic art was tested out in
front of audiences. But while most of Manet's
impressionist peers, like Claude Monet, had
abandoned the salon and formed their
own exhibitions, Manet held firm to the
institution, declaring, the Salon is the
real field of battle. It's there that one
must take one's measure. And there he took his measure
on a number of occasions with varying degrees of success. The jury rejected his
Absinthe Drinker in 1859, but it accepted and awarded
The Spanish Singer in 1861. He was again denied in
1863, and instead exhibited his Luncheon in the Grass
at the Salon des Refuses, causing quite the stir
for its brazen depiction of a naked woman
cavorting with clothed men despite its clear reference
to a much loved Renaissance masterpiece. He drew upon another
16th century masterwork for a painting that was
accepted by the salon in 1865. But Manet's Olympia
was reacted to with hostility and criticism. This was no sensual
Venus, they objected, but a common courtesan depicted
flatly and much too plainly, whom one writer described,
like a corpse on the counters at the morgue. Of course, now, it's
much less provocative. But at the time,
Manet prided himself not on making tired, hazy,
and idealized versions of past events, but on being
a painter of modern life, in the words of his friend
the poet Baudelaire. Manet observed what was
around him in bustling Paris and rendered fragments of
it in a distinct style. His sharp contrast and
elimination of halftones, we can credit to Spanish
masters Goya and Velazquez, whom he greatly admired, as
well as his interest, along with many of his time,
in Japanese woodblock prints. Manet painted a street
singer eating cherries and fancy people gathered
to hear music in gardens. He traveled to Spain
and painted bullfights. He depicted scenes of
the Franco-Prussian War and the execution of
Maximilian in Mexico. He painted his friends,
including artist Berthe Morisot, writer
Emile Zola, and Monet at work on his studio boat. Manet certainly
wasn't the only one looking at modern life
with fresh eyes in ways that many considered
slapdash and unfinished. But he was fixated
less on the scenery and more on the people
that populated it. Stephane Mallarme
understood this focus as paralleling the
post-revolutionary shift in their country,
accounting for the, quote, "participation of
a hitherto ignored people in the political
life of France." This participation
of the non-elite was also very much social,
and the Folies Bergere was just one of a
plethora of venues where the social
classes of Paris would mix and enjoy its copious
new forms of entertainment. Mallarme put it this
way, today, the multitude demands to see
with its own eyes. And if our latter day art
is less glorious, intense, and rich, it's not
without the compensation of truth, simplicity,
and childlike charm. And so by the time we arrive
at A Bar at the Folies Bergere, Manet's
last major painting before passing away at
age 51 from complications due to syphilis, we
have a better sense of the barmaid before us
as a player among many in the circus of
modern Parisian life. The Folies Bergere
and other places like it were lit with the harsh
and bright white light of newly electrified Paris. For two franc, you
could enter and enjoy a popular singer,
dancer, or trapeze act, so hilariously indicated
by these dangling legs. You could also buy
beer and champagne and meet prostitutes as many
have assumed our subject to be. She is presented to
us frontally arranged just so along with an
assortment of refreshments available for sale. Her waistline expertly mimicking
the fluted bowl of oranges. The bar is decorated
with flowers, and so is her decolletage. She is firmly part of the
scene, rooted to her spot at this intransigent marble
counter, dividing her from us and us from her. And who is us? Perhaps we're the gentleman in
the mirror, whose reflection Manet has conveniently shifted
at an angle so we can see it. A cartoonist at
the time jokingly suggested to Manet what his
picture should look like. But from behind, she seems
to be in an active exchange with the man, which is
not at all reflected in the detached gaze we see. Perhaps the exchange
had happened in the past or was about to happen. Perhaps she's
imagining it to happen. People couldn't reconcile
the image at the time, and they haven't been able
to since, despite mountains of literature, reenactments,
and explorations in virtual reality. The fact remains that
she looks out at us, but is ultimately inaccessible. She doesn't quite meet our eyes. And her thoughts, we
can't pretend to know. More than many artists
of the time, Manet set his focus on women. On rare occasions, they
interact intently with others. But for the most
part, they look out. We've caught them in
moments of reverie without strong or
decodeable emotion. It was the birth of the
blase attitude, what Georg Simmel described in
1903 as an indifference toward the distinctions between
things, a psychic mood that is the correct subjective
reflection of a complete money economy. The cafe concert embodied, for
many upper class Parisians, the vulgarity and
immorality of modern life and the loss
inherent in the shift from the home as the center
of social life to the cafe. As Alfred Delvau described it in
a Paris guide, to live at home, to think at home, to
eat and drink at home, we find this boring
and inconvenient. We need publicity, daylight, the
street, the cabaret, the cafe, the restaurant. We like to pose, to make
a spectacle of ourselves, to have a public, a gallery,
witnesses to our life. This was written in 1867
long before the words could ring painfully true in
our social media saturated ears. But perhaps the weight
of this painting and why Manet has been called
the father of modernity is because, here, we are shown
the beginnings of cultural life as we now know it. In this contradictory picture,
we cannot distinguish real life from reflection. The work is all surfaces. And what could be more
relevant in this time as we navigate the oft
mediated and mediating surfaces of our
lives and participate in the cycle of
consumer and consumed or perform our lives
for a faceless crowd. In late 19th century
Paris, and today, there is an excitement
to the spectacle and to our participation
in it, but also a sadness, an alienation,
as we recognize ourselves as commodities. We recognize this look. We see it everywhere, in others,
and most of all, in ourselves. Do you make really
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