manet folies bergere (A Bar at the Folies-Bergère)by Édouard Manet (as observed by Tosh)
Wednesday, September 11, 2024
I always feel sorry for girls or women who work behind a counter, and there is no place for them to go to avoid a man’s glaze. I am guilty of this because I have gone to numerous shops, and there is an attractive woman behind the counter, and I try to make small talk, which, of course, always fails, or to be more optimistic, comes up with a tad short. I’m reminded of this whenever I look at Édouard Manet’s oil on canvas painting made in 1882, manet folies bergere (A Bar at the Folies-Bergère). The young woman in the painting is facing an audience, and since it is a large mirror behind her, we can see her reflection talking to a customer, who we can imagine in Manet, or is it? As viewers, we face her directly, but if I were in the painting, I would face her in front of the barmaid, and therefore, I would see myself in the mirror with her.
But we only see who she is talking to by her reflection, which is on our right of the young woman. I also get the impression that the Folies-Bergére is a large place, but is it? Manet plays with the perspective that makes the image a funhouse mirror display in a carnival; it is more of a psychological point-of-view of an actual and famous location. I had never been there in person and never thought of the place until I saw this painting in numerous art books and online. It is one of those works because it is so famous. I walked by it in theory, but since I started to look at the work, I can see it is truly a masterpiece. It brings up where I am with the painting as a viewer and how Manet cuts up the imagery in a pre-Cubist manner to fit the visual information as a composition. What we are looking at is not real but a visual echo of something in front of Manet, but he tears it up in his mind and redoes the scene.
The girl’s face is captivating in that it can be an expression of boredom or even exhaustion, but it is placed in the context of activity in a party mood, not for this beautiful worker. She is at work, facing the public, and more likely a combination of boredom, tiredness, or even a tad depressed. I see this all the time when I enter a shop, so nothing has changed since then. But this is the first thing I think about when I see this remarkable painting, and then I look closely, and more information comes out, or questions, such as the man talking to the barmaid. Is it just a causal customer or a representation of the artist? We don’t know, but the painting is a mystery and open to interpretation. If I take this work literally, then it is Manet talking to the girl, but then again, it can be any of us as viewers who project ourselves into this painting.
I doubt that Manet put his paint and canvas in the bar and started painting this woman as she worked behind the counter, which means he set up the props and the model in his studio. The image location of the painting, The Folies-Bergère, is an interesting choice because this Parisian nightclub attracted a wide selection of various classes of people, yet the woman who works there is obviously from the working class, or that is how Manet portrays her. The people around her are more likely, at the very least, the leisure class. There is a superficial relationship between the worker and the customer, and it is one of the things that bothers me even today. As mentioned above, I encounter women who, due to their job duties, must stick behind a sales counter to serve various versions of people like yours truly. Or servants at a party or affair, and I never feel that comfortable in such settings because I sense this divide between worker and participant in the party/affair. In Boris Vian’s novel L’ecume des jours (Foam of the Daze), the main character is a servant/cook who fits in two roles - one as a worker and then as a best friend to Colin, the main character and employer. Vian plays with that relationship that is not real, yet I feel it should be the correct form of two people together in a room or space. If it comes down to it, even if the relationship between Batman and Robin is one of worker/friend, one can throw in Alfred the Butler. Is he just an employee or a dear, almost family friend of Bruce Wayne/Batman?
However, the young woman in the painting is not friends with anyone in her bar/counter space. She is there to serve the paying public, and that relationship is played out in a formal arrangement or contract between customer and worker—or, more likely, her boss or management of The Folies-Bergère. Nevertheless, the painting is brilliant in all of its possibilities. Manet sees and tells the bigger picture between workers and culture. It’s interesting to note that the model's expression directly faces us, viewers, but her reflection in the mirror can be telling another side of the narrative. The mirror distorts the reality or is the psychological aspect of that moment as it happens. When I look at her, I feel I’m capturing a moment out of a busy series of moments, and the mirror/reflection conveys the intense action taking place. I watch her in slow motion as the world around her moves at a different speed—a truly remarkable piece of art.
Thanks Tosh. Your one remark about the actual size of the Folies Berger intrigued me because I had never thought of it except in my memory which, as you imply, is larger than the actual place.
Although I love his work, that love comes with an asterisk. I've kind of always thought of Manet as the snob-impressionist by exhibiting at the Paris Salon and later not joining La Société Anonyme of painters, sculptors, and engravers of the Impressionist movement, who in 1873 organized as a public limited company to escape the formidable restrictions of the Paris Salon. But maybe he was just older than those who congregated at Nadar’s photography studio on the Boulevard des Capucines in Paris, and I'm too harsh on him...