Manet

<p>Lampooned during his lifetime for his style as much as his subject matter, French painter <strong>Édouard Manet</strong> (1832–1883) is now considered a crucial figure in the history of art, bridging the transition from Realism to Impressionism.<br /><br /> Manet’s work combined a painterly technique with strikingly modern images of contemporary life, centered on the urban Paris experience. He recorded the <strong>city’s parks, bars, and cabarets, often delighting in the frisson of underground or provocative content.</strong> The Paris salon rejected his <em>Déjeuner sur l’herbe</em> with its juxtaposition of fully dressed men and a nude woman, while the steady gaze and unabashed pose of the prostitute <em><strong>Olympia</strong>, </em>a very modern reworking of Titian’s <em>Venus of Urbino</em>, caused a society scandal.<br /><br /> This richly illustrated book introduces Manet’s work and his uniquely influential combination of Realism, Impressionism, and reworked Old Masters that would become <strong>paradigms of a brave new world for generations of modernists </strong>to come.</p>