Eduard Manet

Eduard Manet was born 23 January 1832 into the upper-middle class social circle he often presented his portraits and genre scenes of everyday life. Manet merged such artistic influences with his varied interests (Including music, fashion, literature and photography) to create innovative and distinctive portrayals of a city and society undergoing irrevocable transformations. In 1858, Manet befriended the poet Charles Baudelaire who came to define and essence of modernity in his 1863 essay.

Manet walked about Paris daily in the early 1860s usually with Baudelaire, recording its changes in his sketchbook (At his times, Paris was at a stage of a cholera outbreak. The streets were filled with dirt and Paris itself was filthy). Manet painted visibly solid strokes, suggesting from through blocks of color. In so doing, he draws the viewer's eye as much to the act of painting as to the depicted scene.

I want to use Manet's work not so much for the narrative, but more to explore the technique he uses to achieve the effect his paintings give out.

The reason I find this artist interesting is that he thought about how he wants people to look at his paintings. Instead of painting such as one of the impressionist paintings of Théodore Chassériau: The Two Sisters, 1843 which was a staged portrait, Manet's work is about capturing the moment which cannot be staged, but instead is captured within seconds and then coming back to it and refining it altogether. He achieves that by using simple strokes to add detail, but before that he applies thick blocks of color which makes the viewer's eye look deeper into the painting when detail is applied afterwards. The thick blocks of color simply give a 3D perspective when you look into his artwork. The quote "Manet's composition encourages the viewer's eye to travel across and into the canvas" (By Alison Bracker) means that the techniques he uses influence the viewer and completely change the way they approach the painting.
This links back to what my original intent is in this project. I want to change the way the viewer looks at something by using a different technique to what you would usually expect causing an illusionary effect. This then makes the viewer want to figure out the purpose and what the artwork is. 

My first impressions of his work were that it was just another artist who paints what he sees in front of him e.g. an artist who stages his work and the paints it, but as I analysed the artist and the meaning behind his work as well as techniques he uses, I recognised him as an incredible artist who's painting mean more when you look deeper into them and they were not staged at all.

My project is mainly focused around placed, installations and 3D in general. The painting above clearly looks 3D and the way the artist gets the effect makes me want to explore it more in depth. It makes the viewer want to explore it and look around t as you can't catch everything from a single glance. Although I do not want to focus on paintings in this project, I want to create responses from my sources using paints and this artist is the key to what I want to achieve in my responses. Many of my photographs represent interior places such as corridors. Using the techniques the artist did, I want to in-cooperate that in my responses to photographs from Piccadilly Circus and Balham.  

The artist uses tone, texture and shape to achieve the 3D-ness in his work. The shape of the brush strokes makes it easy to see the difference in tone and the brush stroke itself creates texture that fits the atmosphere in the painting. As you look deeper into it, you can see the strokes getting smaller until they're just dots. The artist makes the viewer's eyes travel across the canvas and look deep into it.

The mood created in his artwork makes you feel as if you're part of the artwork. You can look so deep into it, it makes it seems as if you're looking down a long path just as you would in real life.

The thing I like most about this image is that the way the artist painted it. He wanted the viewer to explore the canvas to it's fullest and that would usually be impossible on a flat painting, but the artist's technique create this very 3D effect on a flat surface.

One thing I do not like about this painting is the choice of color. Manet could have used a wider variety of browns when painting the buildings to make it a bit more colorful. The dull colors make the viewer not want to focus in the buildings as much which is the opposite of the artists intent.  

The artist's intent was to capture the moment of his life and only drew what was precious to him. He would ignore anything that is irrelevant in his memory e.g. in one of his artworks he drew a massive amount of people from a fair, but did not include the musicians because they were not important to him.

Responses:

As a response to Manet, I created a small painting in which I used thick blocks of color as well as multiple layers to create very dark solid tones. 

What I really like about this response is how the red flare gives an impression of there being a sun behind the block. It shows depth as well as a 3-D effect in the image because it makes you think that there is something behind the object. It is also something that Manet often did with his technique and I think this response has shown that very well.