Long before smartphones turned so many of us
into amateur photographers and revolutionized how we depict each other
through social media, there were the works of French Impressionist
Edouard Manet.
Known for portraits of friends and celebrities of
his era, the painter often called "the first modern artist" came of age
during the mid-1800s when photography first became available to the
public. He even kept his own collection of photos of the subjects he
painted.
Manet's portraits and how they were influenced by
photography are the focus of "Manet: Portraying Life" at the Toledo
Museum of Art, the only U.S. museum to host the exhibition before it
moves to The Royal Academy of Arts in London next winter.
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| Before Facebook, this was there (Image Credit) |
The show that opened this month and runs through the end of the
year features 40 paintings from public and private collections,
including some of his best-known works. Instead of assembling a
retrospective of Manet's works, the two museums chose portraits that
would open the discussion of what impact photography had on Manet's
paintings.
"We're not suggesting an exact reliance on
photography, but this was a new medium in the era that he's painting and
it was very important," said co-curator Lawrence Nichols.
It is
the first time a Manet (1832-1883) exhibit has looked solely at his
portraits, said Nichols, the museum's curator of European and American
painting and sculpture before 1900. The museum's own collection includes
Manet's portrait of a childhood friend who wrote extensively about the
artist.
The works include straight forward portraits of men in
top hats and women in flowing dresses. There are others that illustrate
the change in around his home in Paris, revealing social unrest and the
Industrial Revolution.
Sprinkled throughout the exhibition are
photos of his subjects - some are original and others are digitized from
an album Manet kept - to give insight into how he interpreted them the
people he painted. In one photo, the tie and beard of a man bears a
noticeable similarity to one of his paintings.
"He had images in his life beyond the paintings he made," Nichols said.
About
half of Manet's entire works, which rank among the greatest of the
Impressionist movement, were portraits or scenes from everyday life.
Some
of the portraits in the show evoke the photos that we see today on
social networking sites like Facebook - they're small and
straightforward yet reveal something personal about each subject.
And they reveal how we record and connect with each other.
The
proliferation of images now is similar to what was happening during
Manet's time when the camera made portraits ubiquitous, he said.
These
are ideas that the century-and-a-half old paintings can convey to a
modern audience, Nichols said. "This is very much about 2012 and what it
means to conceive of yourself, to be perceived by someone else," he
said.
Manet's portraits are spread throughout eight galleries
into the museum. The exhibit neatly flows into another show featuring
nearly 100 mostly black and white photographs of Hollywood legends from
the 1920s to the 1960s.
Outside the hall, there are 700 Facebook-like images of community members, museum volunteers and staff.
"These
threads together make it very contemporary," said Toledo Museum
Director Brian Kennedy. "The prints and photos take us back literally
through time to Manet. It covers all the various ways people use various
media to represent each other."
Some iPhone users in India have reported being able to use Facebook's
location based services, i.e. Places in India. Previously, this
function was only usable in the United States, however, either
Facebook's glitching or they're performing a slow roll out of Places.
The function, however, only seems to be usable on iPhone apps and not
Android yet. Either access Places directly through the app or go to
touch.facebook.com via your phone's browser and connect to Places, if
you're one of the few Facebook's decided to roll it out to of course. A
tweet from @msigeek seems to confirm that the roll out is indeed happening.
