Fig. 1 
Fig. 2
Manet’s Olympia is a great example of what I personally infer from Satre’s notion ‚existence precedes essence‘. There is no objective and publicly available truth to be revealed in this painting, but instead there’s only a path, a kaleidoscope of opportunities, a whispering spur inviting you to your very own subjective experience.
While the historic context speaks for itself, the conclusion to be drawn from it remains a vexed issue to this present day, as the work appears unfinished and somewhat incomprehensible.
Paraphrasing art critics and inquiries, immediately reacting to the exhibition in Paris (1865), especially by Théophile Gautier: ‚Why is Olympia so ugly? For what purpose is a black maid standing beside her with a bouquet of flowers? No one seems to be pleased about their smell? Why are the flowers wrapped? And why in newspaper? What role does the wretched skinny cat of that beastly black color play?‘
Manet’s Olympia is a great example of what I personally infer from Satre’s notion ‚existence precedes essence‘. There is no objective and publicly available truth to be revealed in this painting, but instead there’s only a path, a kaleidoscope of opportunities, a whispering spur inviting you to your very own subjective experience.
While the historic context speaks for itself, the conclusion to be drawn from it remains a vexed issue to this present day, as the work appears unfinished and somewhat incomprehensible.
Paraphrasing art critics and inquiries, immediately reacting to the exhibition in Paris (1865), especially by Théophile Gautier: ‚Why is Olympia so ugly? For what purpose is a black maid standing beside her with a bouquet of flowers? No one seems to be pleased about their smell? Why are the flowers wrapped? And why in newspaper? What role does the wretched skinny cat of that beastly black color play?‘
Manet’s Olympia is a great example of what I personally infer from Satre’s notion ‚existence precedes essence‘. There is no objective and publicly available truth to be revealed in this painting, but instead there’s only a path, a kaleidoscope of opportunities, a whispering spur inviting you to your very own subjective experience.
While the historic context speaks for itself, the conclusion to be drawn from it remains a vexed issue to this present day, as the work appears unfinished and somewhat incomprehensible.
Paraphrasing art critics and inquiries, immediately reacting to the exhibition in Paris (1865), especially by Théophile Gautier: ‚Why is Olympia so ugly? For what purpose is a black maid standing beside her with a bouquet of flowers? No one seems to be pleased about their smell? Why are the flowers wrapped? And why in newspaper? What role does the wretched skinny cat of that beastly black color play?‘
„Parts of her body – her right breast with its pallid nipple, the smudged corner of her mouth, the hair cascading on her left shoulder that is so hard to see – are vague and indistinct. Others – her shoulders, her heels, her strategically placed left hand – are drawn in the starkest manner.
Instead of the harmony that usually characterizes the nude, Manet provides ‚inconstitencies … of a curiously unrelieved kind … as the best sort of truth when the subject is ’nakedness‘.“
Couldn’t have phrased it better than Alexander Nehamas in ‚Only a Promise of Happiness: The Place of Beauty in a World of Art‘ 2017.
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