Olympia

Olympia was made by the French impressionist painter Edouard Manet. In this painting, the painter used an angle which could be applied to show the whole body to perform the naked body. He neither fully performed the stereo feeling, nor asked for half-stereo feeling, but took a unique compression stereo feeling. Then the body was with more volume at first glance. Such idea was consistent with other bright parts in this painting—the pillow, bed sheet, colorful scarf and structure of black female slaves. These performances showed an alternating light and darkness or jumping missing in the nude images, which made the whole with a special lightness and brilliance. But their form was still like the bright relief set off in the dark background. Here, the blue lines were highlighted in white to distinguish the yellow, green and rose in the dark background. Because of no intermediate tone from the bright to the dark, so we may consider this compression relief as a color mosaic whose black and white contrast as the image itself strongly affected on the viewer's imagination.

In short, we saw the unity of the style in this painting and all the depicted object was subject to the uniform color effect. Nude was attributed to the deep color structure—although it appeared in the form of compression relief, it had been transformed into a stereo. This led to a poetic feeling which could be described by words, because this poetry was coming from the integrity, infection and vitality of the art image itself appearing in front of the viewers. This was Manet who tried to achieve the unity of shape and color he imaged instead of beauty or truth in describing the things what he saw. To achieve this goal, he determinedly abandoned the description methods favored in the upper class. Then he drew Victor Lena (the naked woman in Olympia) into a mixture of pet and doll. Beauty, truth, life—all had been swallowed by art. He showed his freedom of observation methods in Olympia. In this way, he almost imperceptibly turned his techniques into the ideal and created a road for his own imagination. In this painting, Monet put forward the principles of free observation which was later accepted and regarded as the banner by the whole contemporary art.

Olympiawas about completed in 1863 and displayed in Salon (the official exhibition) in May 1865 for the first time. But it was immediately criticized by the media and even blocked. And Manet was also forced to flee Spain, though a lot of people had painted nude before. Edouard Manet died on April 30, 1883. A large number of people attended his funeral. Edouard Degas said, “Manet is much greater than we imagine.” In 1890, Olympia was purchased by donation and donated to the state. And this masterpiece was displayed at the Le Louvre museum.

Manet firstly studied from academism painter Couture and then imitated and researched Titian, Velasquez, Goya, Hals’s works. Influenced by Japanese paintings, he once participated in Paris Commune Revolution and created Barricade and other stone engravings. He innovated painting skills based on traditional European paintings and excelled at using the loud and clear colors, concise and accurate strokes, reducing intermediate tones, and strengthening the contrast of light and shade, which caused the discrimination of academism. Manet's achievements were mainly in the external light and portraits. After 1863, he got closer to impressionist painters like Monet and had somewhat changed his painting style. But he still drew in his own way.

In 1862, a great event occurred in Paris, France: when academism held the salon exhibition, they excluded nearly 4000 works from more than 300 painters, which had caused widespread discontent and condemned among people. Napoleon III decided to hold another exhibition called “Salon des Refuses” for these paintings being failed for election in order to quell the uproar. On May 15th of this year, “Salon des Refuses” opened. The visitors were much more than those coming for the official exhibition. The most attractive was the young painter Manet’s The Luncheon on the Grass. In front of this painting, there were a great many audiences.

Soon, Manet's another pair of work Olympia caused the turmoil in the art world. The academism rebuked his paintings vulgar, and even the French progress painter leader Courbet at that time also thought his painting lacked authenticity. But his paintings had been warmly embraced by new characters, because his paintings were against school rules, and also out of the realism principles. His painting was not to achieve beauty and truth, but achieve unity in the shape and color, which was regarded by the western modern art as a free observation method and the banner of the principles. Although Manet never willingly admitted that he was the Impressionist and had never attended the Impressionist exhibition, he invisibly became the founder and leader of the impressionists. He had devoted his life to the painting techniques and reform and the impact of classical idealism and school and opened a prelude to the history of painting color revolution.