Édouard Manet (1832-83) is broadly thought-about to be the primary modernist painter. His groundbreaking works stoked controversy within the bourgeois Paris artwork world for his or her avant-garde brushwork and depictions of the nude feminine kind. On this instalment of the collection Nice Artwork Defined, the UK curator, gallerist and video essayist James Payne particulars why, at the same time as nudity was prevalent within the artwork of Manet’s period, the depictions of bare ladies in his work have been radical for his or her unidealised fashion – and for the way in which they stare immediately on the viewer, daring, per Payne, to defy the male gaze. Centring his evaluation on Manet’s groundbreaking work Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe (‘The Luncheon on the Grass’; 1862-63), Payne contextualises Manet’s radical strategy and his very important place in artwork historical past as a bridge between realism and impressionism.
