reading timothy clark’s essay (preliminaries to a possible treatment of ‘olympia’ in 1865) about why the painting elicited such a vicious response from art critics and why it was mostly ignored. wonder what people think of it today.
in the 1860s, manet did not follow the rules of decorum as far as painting nudes. a nude was supposed to be a mid point b/w femme honnête and fille publique – so that sexuality was at once revealed and masked. manet disregarded these rules. there is a frankness, a rigidity, a disobedience about his olympia which was found to be disturbing.
there were also some rules of engagement b/w the painted nude and the spectator – for example the height at which she was displayed, scale, etc. these rules were also broken by manet.
finally, the style of painting is somewhat unconventional – her outline is v hard-edged, v defined, yet the painting was often described as incomplete due to the indefinite contours of her body.
to better understand how diff olympia was from traditional nudes, check out titian’s venus which is supposed to have been manet’s inspiration.