Manet vs. Picasso

Compare and contrast Manet, Le Dejeuner sur l' herbe to Picasso, Les Demoiselles d' Avignon. Each of these paintings shocked the art viewing public and critics when they were first exhibited, but now both are considered masterpieces. Why were they so scandalous in their time, and why do they not shock art lovers today?






Edouard Manet’s painting Le Dejeuner sur l’herbe was deemed as indecent because it depicts two fully clothed men in the casual company of a nude woman. The woman’s body almost seems to be glowing, as if she’s intentionally intended to be the center focus of the painting. Since she is staring directly at the viewer, holding a firm gaze, it seems as if she is completely unashamed of her lack of clothing. The nude woman also seems to have a slight smirk, almost like she is slightly amused at the shock given to the viewer when he or she first lays eyes on the painting. The woman in the background is supposedly too large and takes up too much spatial area on the picture plane, and Manet’s painting is considered sloppy and not very good to some, because of his obvious brush strokes, and how it appears to be unfinished in some parts of the scene.




Pablo Picasso’s painting titled Les Demoiselles d’ Avignon depicts five prostitutes blatantly displaying themselves to the viewer, as if they are trying to seductively entice the viewer into a space that appears both smooth and splintered, and almost confuses our understanding of the painting. Picasso’s painting was considered controversial in it’s time because of the bold solicitousness of sexual energy that seems to flow throughout the work. His painting style was considered controversial in the sense that he was strongly influenced by Spanish sculpture and African carvings, which is shown by the masks being worn by the two women on the right. Picasso’s hacking brush strokes have been referred to as impetuous and violent and assumed to be based on the idea of African savagery.
Both of these works broke all of the rules of their times, and forever changed the way that nudes would be painted and viewed. In Manet’s time, his painting depicted women as being brazen, or shameless, which is something that was unheard of then. Women were expected to be modest or prudish, and for this woman to be in your face with her nudity and her direct stare was simply unheard of.
Sexual freedom wasn’t a norm at the time when Picasso painted either, especially in the middle class society that most painters in that time targeted as traditional patrons of their works. Since impressionism and fauvism were the current movements, Picasso’s decision to use lines along with cubism seemed like a direct rejection on his part of the popular movements of the time.
Art lovers today wouldn’t be shocked by nude women like they were back then, because of the extreme desire of people today to do anything for some sort of shock value, and due to their thirst to evoke a radical uproar from the people around them, more and more brazen ideas and expressions are getting to be socially acceptable. This social acceptance of art that would have once been considered controversial is causing desensitization to the general art viewing public.