Once again my server conspires against me. I had hoped to bring you a image from the middle ages but I caught up against a bad server error. Instead here is another beautiful image istead.
Edouard Manet, no to be confused with Monet, is one of the most significant artist of the last century for a couple of reasons. First he changed the way art was made...then he did it again. During the early part of his career he started this sensation called realism. This didn't mean that art was realistic before, and artists were very good at making convincingly real depictions of people...what Manet did was make art more human, it was more realistic in that it more closely resembled real life. The old topics of grand scenes which incl. kings and gods and ancient history, though beautifully drawn, got replaced by stuff like this, quiet and realistic. This is just an ordinary person, doing ordinary things. Paintings of mundane topics like this are called "Genre" Now the dutch had been doing stuff like this for centuries, but this was the first time that the french picked it up and ran with it. Even so, the french scenes were more film noir, grittier and more real, scenes of bar maids and prostitutes and other people of the so-called street level. (Now these were the same people that artists had been hangin out with for centuries. Artists had been using these people as models for years, but they had been painting them into the same ol tired scenes. Next time you go to a museum and look at some religious paintings from the 1500's onward, take a close look at the faces of the saints and madonnnas, chances are your looking at the artist's favorite drinking body or a neighborhood prostitute. Ironic, isn't it.) This however was the first time that the artists starting portraying people as they really are. This bar maid for instance, she doesn't look that thrilled does she? She stands there pretty much as you would have seen her yourself in a Paris salon some 110 years ago. The title doesn't even use her name, just the name of the bar, how's that for ordinary?
Now I said that manet changed art twice...I'm getting to that. After the input of realism, Manet went on to become very influential to a group of artist everybody's heard of...the impressionists. After realism impressionism was the second biggest thing going in the 1870's. Before impressionism most art was made in the studio, with lots of study and lots of preliminary drawings and lots of patience. Then someone thought of actually doing art on the spot..and weather permitting...outside. Now working outside pushes a time constraint on you, you have to work quickly before the light changes. You can't sweat the details, so you move quickly, using broad strokes and worry more of the "impression" of the thing you are painting...than an actual literal representation. Let me show you what I mean. take a close look at the background of this painting. See the people reflected in the mirror behind the barmaid...no you don't, those aren't people at all. Look really closely, I know it's hard on a scan, but those people are just a bunch of loose brushstrokes, giving you the impression of a crowd, but the people are really all there.
On a less technical note. I choose this image to be one of the TTMBWIAHOAT time for its candid tenderness and intimacy. See the reflection of the girl behind her in the mirror, notice that you can see a mustached gentleman in a top hat...guess what...that's you! or rather that's the artist. You're seeing his reflection through his eyes. The artist has plopped you down right into the middle of his life, looking intimately through his eyes...cool huh? Manet must've thought this was a pretty neat barmaid.