[One Sip of a Book] This Book Is a Comprehensive Monograph on the Painter Manet

Some sentences encapsulate the entire content of the book itself, while others instantly reach the reader's heart, creating a point of contact with the book. We excerpt and introduce such meaningful sentences from the book. - Editor's note

This is a full-fledged comprehensive monograph on Manet, illuminating a pioneering artist from multiple angles within the historical context of his time. In fact, Manet was properly appreciated only posthumously. His friends held a memorial exhibition at the art school in January 1884, and even Degas, who often quarreled with Manet, confessed, "He was a far greater man than we knew." A total of 179 works were exhibited, including his representative work Olympia, oil paintings, watercolors, pastels, pencil drawings, etchings, and lithographs. The author regards this as the first turning point in reevaluating Manet's artistic world. It became an opportunity to elicit favorable attitudes from many critics and the public. After being introduced to the United States during the 1889 World's Fair, it attracted explosive interest from American and German enthusiasts.

Manet became a painter despite his father's opposition. Although he studied under the history painting master Couture, they often clashed over teaching methods and eventually parted ways. From 1862 to 1863, walking the path of an independent artist, he presented provocative artworks such as Luncheon on the Grass and Olympia. However, his style, which violated existing rules and was ahead of its time, caused discomfort and discord with the public. Moreover, he was not simply a skilled painter but had pondered the "essence of art" since his youth. Even after becoming an adult, he expanded his intellectual horizons through exchanges with intellectuals, which led him to bring sensitive social issues into his paintings. He was also deeply interested in politics as a radical republican.

The author enriches the understanding of both Manet's life and works, who is better known for his paintings.

Considering that the theme of "women" occupies a significant portion in terms of quantity, quality, frequency, and importance in Manet's paintings, it would not be wrong to call him by another name alongside the commonly attributed titles of "founder of flat painting" or "painter of modern life"?namely, "painter of women." p. 18

Manet's unique painting technique involves drawing inspiration from past materials, removing their content and meaning, and then applying his own colors to create something new. Manet's style is similar to how Marx modified the themes of Hegel or Ricardo to construct a grand discourse in his own language. Manet also seemed to intend to "synthesize" the works of past masters in his own way. This synthesis results in variations of old themes and simultaneously the invention of new themes. p. 107

Bataille emphasized the aspects of "destruction of social taboos" and "rejection of themes" in Manet's paintings, reinterpreting him as "the person who unfolded modern painting before our eyes." p. 130

Such criticism risks turning the "simple" into the "complex" in understanding artworks, potentially misleading viewers into thinking there is some deeply hidden mysterious element within the work that can be grasped only through profound insight. Since artworks can evoke different impressions depending on the viewer, it is advisable to regard "Foucault's Manet," along with various other critiques, as "one perspective" on Manet's paintings seen through the unique lens of a philosopher. p. 148

Manet was a painter who brought innovative changes not only in the form of painting but also in themes and content. Until his death at the age of 51, Paris, which was both his home and the main stage of his artistic activities, was a treasure trove offering diverse artistic materials. Manet meticulously depicted social changes brought by industrialization and urbanization, such as the bourgeois daily life, spectacular cityscapes, social gatherings and leisure, moral decay following the collapse of traditional values, secularization of religion, and the lives of the poor and outcasts living on the margins. p. 169

Manet was always deeply interested in politics. As a radical republican, he "hated social injustice, violent oppression, the vulgarity of philistines, and the hypocrisy of the Second Empire." Therefore, it is no coincidence that, unlike other painters, he could actively express his views through paintings containing political messages. p. 225

Modernist Manet | Written by Hong Il-lip | Hwandaeui Siktak | 288 pages | 22,000 KRW

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