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Emily Brink examines Édouard Manet’s (1832-1883) portrayal of bodily injury and recovery in experimental works executed at the end of his artistic career.

Image courtesy of interviewee. July 15, 2024

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This video discusses the role of syphilis in the artistic practice of Édouard Manet, a prominent 19th-century French artist. It highlights how Manet's battle with this disease is often overlooked in scholarly studies, typically mentioned only in footnotes, yet it significantly influenced his later work.

The speaker argues for a re-examination of Manet's art, particularly in the late 1870s, as it coincides with the visible effects of his illness, such as joint pain and physical incapacitation. This video period saw a subtle shift in his artistic focus, moving towards themes of vulnerability and rehabilitation in his representations of the human body.

The lecture identifies two key works from this time: “A Man with Crutches” and “The Convalescent,” both of which explore the concept of bodies recovering from illness or trauma. These pieces, executed in ink, represent more intimate contemplations rather than the grand historical painting Manet was known for.

Moreover, the text situates Manet within the broader context of societal changes during his lifetime, including shifts in medical practices and public health, particularly in relation to sexually transmitted diseases. The speaker notes how the evolving understanding of diseases and their treatment influenced artistic expressions and societal perceptions of marginalized groups, such as prostitutes and the impoverished.

Ultimately, the speaker calls for a reconsideration of how Manet's syphilitic condition impacted not only his style but his thematic choices, especially in the representation of vulnerable bodies. Future research is suggested to focus on the interconnectedness of pathology, artistic practice, and portraiture, highlighting how art can cultivate empathy and reflect the complexities of the human experience amid illness.

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It's been widely recognized that Manet was

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among the most notable artists of the 19th century

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who suffered from syphilis.

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There are, there's a long list,

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and it's a disease that affectionately came to be known

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as the French disease, which is very appropriate considering

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what it's, this is a focus on a French subject.

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Um, but in our historical studies, this aspect

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of Manny's life, the fact

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that he suffered from syphilis is often

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just discussed anecdotally or relegated to footnotes,

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or even more recently used as some kind of explanation

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for his later style during his later years when he,

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he really begins to focus on still life

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because he can't go out any longer

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because he's recuperating.

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Um, but I wanted to rethink the role

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that syphilis might have played in Manet's practice

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before his final years, in the period at the end

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of the 1870s when he begins to be symptomatic

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or more accurately when we might say the effects

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of his disease become visible.

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So most notably, he begins to suffer from falls

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and joint pain, and he becomes,

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his disease is revealed effectively to, to his circle.

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Uh, so this investigation began for me.

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I, I'm a specialist in 19th century art with a focus,

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on, on French work,

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but also sort of global,

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cross-cultural influences in this period.

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But I, I began to be interested in the connection

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between pathology and artistic practice.

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And Manet is kind of one of these fundamental

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figures in the art historical canon became a fascination

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for me and a focus for me.

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And so I wanted to see how the sort of manifestations

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of disease affected his work.

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Um, but I got there not actually from the point

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of the disease, but originally from the point of his art

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and looking at some subtle changes

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that take place towards the end of his career

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before he's confined at home, in the 1870s.

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And, and notice that he begins to sort of shift subtly

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his focus, in and around 18 78, 79.

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And this is important because this is the moment,

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as I mentioned earlier, when he really becomes

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visibly affected by his disease.

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So I have focused then our, our, I began

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by looking at this small cluster of works,

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which I'm calling, his sort of response

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to bodies in states of, of rehabilitation, which I see

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as kind of an empathetic, contemplation

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of bodies that are vulnerable.

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And this is broadly interesting to me

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because I am concerned

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with this particular chronological moment at the end

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of the 19th century, particularly in France, but also

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because it speaks to evolutions of,

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understanding with respect to notions of the self,

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with respect to, notions of,

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of disease in this moment.

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And its visibility, it's increased visibility.

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It's an, it's increased recognition.

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Um, so, so I, I came to it as just sort of to,

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to sum this up, I came to it through the art

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and noticing a sort of pattern, a cluster of works

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at the, the end of the 1870s in mayonnaise practice,

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and began to ask questions about, well, what is affecting

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that shift for him?

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You know, we often think of art historians often

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historically have located Manet as the, the kind of,

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birth of modern art that, that the modern begins with Manet.

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Now, that is a often contested, you know,

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it's often contested terrain.

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Um, but one cannot deny the fact that Manet,

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shifts the conversation around what

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art looks like, what art means,

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and how art is done in the middle of the 19th century.

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So we can sort of look to some various definitions and,

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and modern art is one of those terms

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that is incredibly complex and you have to unpack.

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Um, but we can look to a couple of definitions maybe

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to understand what that means.

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And we can look to two of mayonnaise's contemporaries,

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Aire being notably one of them who very importantly writes,

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the Art of Modern Life.

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And, and then Iola, the, the naturalist writer and,

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and very important political journalist

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who is a contemporary and friend

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and supporter of mayonnaise, who says that art is a corner

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of creation seen through a temperament.

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So I take both of those sort of frameworks as, as ways

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of contextualizing who mayonnaise is

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because he is situated in this moment

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that recognizes a new sort of definition of daily life,

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which we call the modern.

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And at the same time, we begin to see a, a changing sense of

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what art can do,

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and that it is filtered

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through a particular kind of temperament.

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And man's temperament is important

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because as many scholars have have noted, he is somebody

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who is caught in the conflicts of his moment.

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And one of those conflicts is a tension between

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what we would call the world of the bourgeois

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and the world of Bohemia.

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So he's in Paris, for his career,

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grows up very affluent, grows up

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with a lot of privilege.

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His father is, involved in sort

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of judicial circles.

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He is a bureaucrat, and he decides, Manny decides

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that he is not going to follow in the sort of,

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straight pass of,

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of bourgeois bureaucratic education.

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He wants to, he wants to study art.

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And so in the sort of grand history

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of parents being frustrated

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by their students becoming artists, his father was too.

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And, and man aid decides though that, he's going

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to study art not through

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what has historically been the pathway for, for people in,

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in France, which is the called the very sort of,

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conservative, but you know,

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quite well established institutional way of studying art.

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He decides he's going to study with, Tuma Couture,

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who is, an artist who had come up through the, the

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ol de boza, but who had established his own

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studio to teach students.

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And I say this because it's important to recognize

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that from the very beginning of his career,

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Manet is setting himself on a path that is not, that is,

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is set tangentially to the establishment,

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and it is set oftentimes in counter distinction to it.

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So choosing to study with couture was an important

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aspect of

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what I would call Manny's ethos from the very beginning

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as an, as an artistic practitioner.

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Um, and then as we see his career evolve, we see that he,

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as I, as I mentioned, is caught between these worlds,

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this world of privilege that he's grown up in.

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And then this world of Bohemia

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that is increasingly becoming visible in the middle

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of the 19th century, during the second empire,

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by which I mean people living on the margins, rag pickers,

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buskers, people who prostitutes, people who are,

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operating on the periphery of society.

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This becomes the key fascination for Manet.

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So we, what we see him effectively do

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through his artistic practice, is make that changing

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societal foundation visible to the world.

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And he does this by painting this tension that I've

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identified between the changing bourgeois landscape

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of Paris, which is fundamentally altered

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during Napoleon II's reign

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and the marginalia of society

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who are, are in increasingly, being pushed

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beyond the center of the city.

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Uh, so one of the most, two of the most important works

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that we identify with Mene, is the de,

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which is the, his picnic on the grass where he positions,

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his, his principal muse naked

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among some very middle class gentlemen.

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And then Olympia, same muse, the, the model victory in,

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position as a contemporary prostitute.

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And part of why these works were so controversial, part

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of why we begin to locate the modern with works like these

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and with Manny's early practice, is that he brings a sort

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of unvarnished view of daily, modern life

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to the French salon, which upends it.

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People have been used to looking at things relegated

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to the past, we call it history painting,

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idealized nudes.

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His nude has dirty feet and armpit hair,

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and though she's beautiful,

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she is unequivocally of her time.

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And so part of what Manne contributes to the conversation,

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I always say more broadly beyond the fact

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that many people think he is the, the father of modern art,

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or even the father of Impressionism, though he is,

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he's never part of the aste

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and name who would become the impressionist school, is

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that he is a amazing observer

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of this moment of change.

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And it's a moment of change that impacts the rest of,

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Western thinking well into the 20th century in terms of

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economics terms, politics, but certainly also aesthetics.

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The shifts in medical treatment are not divorced from the

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other shifts that I've just mentioned in no small part,

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because if we think about the civic restructure

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of Paris under Napoleon, the third one

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of the driving engines was hygiene

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and the containment of disease.

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So Paris, like many other urban capitals across Europe,

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had suffered from a series of e epidemics, historically,

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but, but potently in the 19th century.

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So the cholera epidemic of 1832 is a notable one.

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And one of the things that we see Napoleon II

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and Baron Hausman wanting to do when they refashion,

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the structure of Paris, throughout the 1850s

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and 1860s, is to make it a

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hygienically sound city.

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So that's important

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because at the same time too, in this moment, by virtue

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of shifts in medical practice, one might even say by virtue

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of an increased secularization, we have a sort of new period

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of medical and scientific inquiry.

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So Louis pester, very famously in this exact moment

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that we're talking about in the 1860s,

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before, many become symptomatic with syphilis.

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But in the 1860s in this period when Paris is being

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refashioned, Lou begins to come up

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with his germ theory,

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which will radically change the way we understand the

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communication of disease and, and, and contagion itself.

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So I would say generally then the sort of visibility

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and management and,

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and public management

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of disease is shifting in this very moment.

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Uh, and and part of that too,

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Michelle Fuco very famously has said that in this period,

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you begin to have a shift in, in terms of how disease is

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treated and who treats it.

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And one of the things that changes is this recognition

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that the sick bed is a, is a space to kind

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of laboratory for investigation.

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And so we even see this in the notebooks of,

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of Louis Pastore when he's doing his rabies studies, is

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that he notes the distribution of, his vaccine,

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but he also notes the weather and he notes the conditions

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and he notes details about his patients.

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And so there is this increasing sense

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of a more holistic understanding of not just disease

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itself, but disease within an environment,

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and that those environments need to be, sanitized.

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They need to be controlled, they need to be contained.

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So when we look acutely, that's sort of the broad scope

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of the situation.

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When Manet becomes symptomatic

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and when it's clear he's, he is suffering from syphilis,

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though we, we understand that he probably suffered from it

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for most of his adult life,

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but when he becomes symptomatic, there is a sort

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of new apparatus for how to deal with disease

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that has emerged in France as a result of these shifts.

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I've just described, infrastructural shifts,

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conceptual shifts, experimental shifts, so

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many, the management of man syphilis

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takes place across a lot of different spaces

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and involves a lot of different experimental treatments.

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But one thing I would just mention too, which goes back,

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circles back to this idea of Bohemia, is that

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because syphilis, of course,

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is a sexually transmitted disease, part of

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what we see happening is in the same period this push

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towards hygiene infrastructurally in Paris,

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we see a regulation of sex

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and we see a regulation most acutely of prostitution

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under the second empire.

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So I, I think those things can't be divorced.

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That part of what fascinated me about this particular aspect

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of Manny's life is not just that it affects him physically,

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but that it reveals something about the world in which he

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lives, and,

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and the shifts culturally, politically

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infrastructurally, around disease

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and particularly sexually transmitted

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disease in its management.

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The two principle works that I focus on for this period,

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as I said, are works that are done in the 1878 into 1879.

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And one is, a man with crutches,

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and the other is called the convalescent.

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And these two works probably evid, you know,

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evidently from their titles, deal with bodies who are as,

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as I say, recuperating from disease

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or recuperating from, from physical trauma.

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Now, what's interesting about them to me though, is not just

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that they make this sort of idea

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of the vulnerable bo vulnerable body visible,

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but also that there are works that are done in ink.

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And this is important because we often think of Manet

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as a painter, and certainly his most canonical works were,

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but from the beginning of his career, he was fascinated

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by printmaking, and he was fascinated by the, the process

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of, of working with, with ink.

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And the a man with crutches is a, a, a drawn work,

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whereas the convalescent is an etching.

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But I put them in this sort of similar umbrella category

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of experiments in ink

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because I, I think it's important that they sit also

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at the periphery of mayonnaises practice, which suggests

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to me that they are

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in some sense more private contemplations.

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And part of what I think too is, is important about this,

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is that both of these works were reproduced iteratively,

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by which I mean, he came back to them multiple times

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and redid them multiple times.

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So it wasn't just a one-off.

16:41.675 --> 16:45.175
And, and we can learn a lot by the kinds of works

16:45.245 --> 16:46.415
that artists repeat

16:46.955 --> 16:51.335
or come back to kinds of subjects, the kinds of forms.

16:52.075 --> 16:54.135
And in both these cases, a man

16:54.135 --> 16:55.895
with crutches has two iterations.

16:56.075 --> 16:59.135
It has, its first iteration from 1878,

16:59.135 --> 17:02.095
which is held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

17:02.155 --> 17:06.215
New York is, as I said, a work done, drawn in ink

17:06.315 --> 17:08.495
of a man with an amputated leg.

17:09.495 --> 17:12.875
And it's a work done on transfer paper,

17:12.885 --> 17:15.435
which I think also is indicative of this kind of,

17:15.895 --> 17:18.715
if not ephemeral, certainly tangential

17:18.775 --> 17:20.915
or experimental quality of the work.

17:21.935 --> 17:23.675
But then it's reproduced again,

17:24.095 --> 17:26.035
or many returns to the subject.

17:26.085 --> 17:28.195
Again, we don't actually know the sequencing.

17:28.195 --> 17:30.355
They might have been done at the exact same time.

17:30.355 --> 17:32.275
They're slightly different, in a work

17:32.275 --> 17:33.515
that's held by the ashmolian.

17:33.575 --> 17:36.435
And so these two works, again, the sort of repetition

17:36.435 --> 17:41.195
of them suggests a increased preoccupation with this,

17:41.625 --> 17:43.875
this man with an amputated leg.

17:44.515 --> 17:47.395
Incidentally, we also see this figure emerge in a painted

17:47.465 --> 17:48.595
work at the same time.

17:48.775 --> 17:52.965
So it's sort of haunting mayonnaise's practice in a sense.

17:53.665 --> 17:54.925
And I spend a lot

17:54.925 --> 17:57.245
of time thinking about this particular piece

17:57.275 --> 18:01.725
because though we can't, you know, look into the future

18:02.105 --> 18:04.165
and then make equivalences,

18:04.185 --> 18:08.165
but mayonnaise's leg is amputated at the end of his career.

18:08.625 --> 18:12.085
So after he does this work, and I only mention that

18:12.085 --> 18:15.605
because I think part of what I'm trying to draw out is

18:15.605 --> 18:19.085
that the pains he is feeling, the effects he is having,

18:19.515 --> 18:21.645
most notably with his legs

18:21.945 --> 18:24.325
and with the stability of his legs, which is brought on

18:24.325 --> 18:25.845
by the, the syphilitic infection,

18:26.885 --> 18:30.845
I think makes him gravitate to this contemplation of

18:31.315 --> 18:35.325
what is, in some senses, formally seen as an incomplete body

18:36.065 --> 18:39.125
or a, a restructured body.

18:40.105 --> 18:41.405
Now, the convalescent is different.

18:41.475 --> 18:42.485
It's an image of a woman.

18:42.485 --> 18:43.725
Many of you will believe it to be

18:44.375 --> 18:46.045
Susan Leh, who is his wife.

18:47.105 --> 18:49.885
And it is a very sort of close cro image

18:50.345 --> 18:52.485
of a woman probably sitting in a chair,

18:52.745 --> 18:55.745
but by, by virtue of the title,

18:55.765 --> 18:57.545
we know she is convalescing, right?

18:57.555 --> 18:58.985
She's recovering from something.

18:59.725 --> 19:02.025
And again, this is a work done in ink. This is an etching.

19:02.125 --> 19:03.665
So it's meant to be reproduced,

19:04.405 --> 19:08.145
but what's also telling about this particular experiment,

19:08.205 --> 19:10.145
and I keep using that term deliberately

19:10.425 --> 19:14.545
'cause I think, Manet is a consummate experiment.

19:15.525 --> 19:18.945
Uh, this experiment he does in three states,

19:19.485 --> 19:22.625
by which we mean he is taken the plate, the etching plate,

19:23.265 --> 19:26.825
reworked it, run it again, reworked it, run it again.

19:26.925 --> 19:28.705
So we have this sort of evolution

19:28.725 --> 19:31.985
of the image itself over time through the,

19:32.045 --> 19:33.905
the different states of the etching process,

19:34.035 --> 19:37.825
which again tells us that he's ruminating on this idea of

19:37.825 --> 19:39.705
what it means to, to convalesce.

19:40.405 --> 19:42.985
And the image that we see here is not just

19:42.985 --> 19:45.305
of a woman sitting in a chair closely cropped,

19:45.445 --> 19:47.785
but staring off into the distance

19:48.245 --> 19:50.745
and the kind of sense of isolation,

19:51.325 --> 19:52.665
the sense of confinement.

19:53.245 --> 19:56.225
Um, the sense of, being limited

19:56.815 --> 20:00.345
that convalescing often necessarily requires,

20:01.005 --> 20:03.025
is really perfectly captured, I think,

20:03.205 --> 20:04.905
in that particular work. So

20:05.045 --> 20:06.945
If you think about contemporary counts

20:07.005 --> 20:08.065
of medical practice,

20:08.095 --> 20:11.185
many never really participated in this world.

20:11.445 --> 20:14.185
And, and we can see, we can map a whole, you know,

20:14.535 --> 20:19.145
broader shift in how medicine is disseminated,

20:19.745 --> 20:23.745
experimented with, but also visualized in this moment.

20:24.325 --> 20:27.265
Um, and so what I think is also fascinating for me,

20:27.725 --> 20:31.115
unlike a lot of the other figures whose work I have focused

20:31.215 --> 20:35.235
on as of late who are working expressly in the realm

20:35.235 --> 20:38.435
of one might call medical illustration, is

20:38.435 --> 20:41.035
that this is not something Manny is obsessed with.

20:41.815 --> 20:44.235
And it's interesting too, to go back to

20:44.235 --> 20:47.285
where I began in this conversation about how he chose

20:47.345 --> 20:51.045
to study art because, the study of anatomy was

20:51.045 --> 20:54.165
of course, fundamental, the boza

20:54.165 --> 20:58.165
and that sort of conservative, institutional way

20:58.165 --> 21:01.525
of studying, artistic representation.

21:02.355 --> 21:03.765
Mane didn't go that route.

21:04.265 --> 21:07.845
He didn't study, study, you know, viscera

21:08.225 --> 21:09.725
and anatomy in the way a lot

21:09.725 --> 21:11.365
of his contemporaries might have.

21:11.945 --> 21:13.085
And I say that only

21:13.315 --> 21:17.005
because I think what we are seeing in the way he approaches

21:17.875 --> 21:20.565
disease in this particular cluster of works

21:21.535 --> 21:25.795
is less this idea of one might say physical

21:26.715 --> 21:31.675
symptoms and more focused on their effects, right?

21:31.695 --> 21:35.385
And how does it, what does it do to lose a limb?

21:36.055 --> 21:40.225
What does it do to have to endure bedrest?

21:40.755 --> 21:44.185
These are what he is revealing through his works.

21:45.085 --> 21:46.825
And so public health reform,

21:46.825 --> 21:49.105
medical practice in this moment is important

21:49.285 --> 21:50.745
to the story only.

21:50.885 --> 21:55.025
In so far as we know that it's preoccupying a lot

21:55.025 --> 21:56.025
of Manny's time.

21:56.995 --> 22:01.055
He is undergoing hydrotherapy, he's getting

22:01.565 --> 22:03.295
four hour massages a day.

22:03.835 --> 22:05.815
Um, he's going to a series

22:05.815 --> 22:07.415
of experimental treatments at Larry,

22:08.225 --> 22:12.295
which is a really expansive, initially cholera hospital

22:12.905 --> 22:16.015
built, in the, in the, and,

22:16.075 --> 22:18.775
and trying to manage this disease.

22:18.875 --> 22:22.775
So I think this idea of disease management is important

22:23.365 --> 22:28.355
because it demonstrates just how influential

22:29.225 --> 22:32.535
these symptoms were to mannas daily life.

22:32.995 --> 22:35.935
So the conclusions from this work as, as I sort of hinted

22:35.935 --> 22:39.455
to at the beginning is a reconsideration

22:39.835 --> 22:41.855
of Manny's later practice

22:42.755 --> 22:47.695
and a sort of repositioning of potentially the importance

22:47.875 --> 22:49.495
of his syphilitic condition

22:49.915 --> 22:53.855
to the way he approached not just style, but for me subjects

22:54.355 --> 22:57.185
and specifically how he approaches bodies.

22:58.085 --> 23:01.945
So that's what I am quite literally fleshing out

23:01.945 --> 23:03.785
through this particular study.

23:04.285 --> 23:09.165
In terms of future research, my work has really focused

23:09.305 --> 23:13.885
as of late on the relationship between pathology

23:13.985 --> 23:15.125
and artistic practice

23:15.425 --> 23:18.605
and how that has manifested in things like

23:19.005 --> 23:20.285
portraiture in particular.

23:20.905 --> 23:22.365
Now, I don't think it's incidental

23:23.085 --> 23:25.575
that the works I have focused on in this Manet study

23:25.995 --> 23:29.015
as a kind of test case are in some sense very

23:29.115 --> 23:30.215
wedded to portraiture.

23:30.215 --> 23:33.455
They are single images of people, and I think that's

23:33.645 --> 23:35.815
because portraiture and,

23:36.115 --> 23:39.535
and particularly, not group portraits,

23:39.535 --> 23:43.375
but single portraits of individuals has the potential,

23:43.675 --> 23:47.045
to cultivate that, that empathetic connection.

23:47.545 --> 23:50.445
So for instance, another project I've been working on is

23:50.725 --> 23:53.805
actually related to the practice of Louis past,

23:54.145 --> 23:58.685
who also incidentally trained, in, in pastels

23:58.685 --> 24:01.965
and in in portraiture, in artistic practice

24:01.985 --> 24:03.405
and wanted to be an artist.

24:04.065 --> 24:09.005
Um, but that, that pastor himself, looks

24:09.185 --> 24:12.475
to this relationship between

24:13.425 --> 24:18.035
visualization and disease in his published studies in the

24:18.035 --> 24:19.555
way that he conducts experiments.

24:20.055 --> 24:24.035
Um, he takes a series of photographs of his rabies patients,

24:24.085 --> 24:27.275
which I think are also really poignantly connected

24:27.275 --> 24:29.835
to this idea of cultivating empathy

24:29.835 --> 24:31.795
and thinking of his patients as people,

24:32.615 --> 24:33.835
not just as specimens.

24:34.495 --> 24:36.915
So broadly concerned that my, my work is sort

24:36.915 --> 24:40.475
of going in the direction of this rethinking

24:40.475 --> 24:41.955
of the modern body broadly,

24:42.215 --> 24:45.555
but this connection between, as I said, pathology,

24:46.115 --> 24:47.395
artistic practice, and portraits.

"Exploring the Intersection of Illness and Artistic Evolution: Manet's Struggle with Syphilis"

00:00:00 - It's been widely recognized that Manet was among the most notable artists of the 19th century who suffered from syphilis. There are, there's a long list, and it's a disease that affectionately came to be known as the French disease, which is very appropriate considering what it's, this is a focus on a French subject. but in our historical studies, this aspect of Manny's life, the fact that he suffered from syphilis is often just discussed anecdotally or relegated to footnotes, or even more recently used as some kind of explanation for his later style during his later years when he, he really begins to focus on still life because he can't go out any longer because he's recuperating.
00:00:45 - that syphilis might have played in Manet's practice before his final years, in the period at the end of the 1870s when he begins to be symptomatic or more accurately when we might say the effects of his disease become visible. So most notably, he begins to suffer from falls and joint pain, and he becomes, his disease is revealed effectively to, to his circle. so this investigation began for me. I, I'm a specialist in 19th century art with a focus,
00:01:23 - but also sort of global, cross-cultural influences in this period. But I, I began to be interested in the connection between pathology and artistic practice. And Manet is kind of one of these fundamental figures in the art historical canon became a fascination for me and a focus for me. And so I wanted to see how the sort of manifestations of disease affected his work. but I got there not actually from the point of the disease, but originally from the point of his art and looking at some subtle changes that take place towards the end of his career
00:02:07 - And, and notice that he begins to sort of shift subtly his focus, in and around 18 78, 79. And this is important because this is the moment, as I mentioned earlier, when he really becomes visibly affected by his disease. So I have focused then our, our, I began by looking at this small cluster of works, which I'm calling, his sort of response to bodies in states of, of rehabilitation, which I see as kind of an empathetic, contemplation of bodies that are vulnerable.
00:02:48 - because I am concerned with this particular chronological moment at the end of the 19th century, particularly in France, but also because it speaks to evolutions of, understanding with respect to notions of the self, with respect to, notions of, of disease in this moment. And its visibility, it's increased visibility. It's an, it's increased recognition. so, so I, I came to it as just sort of to, to sum this up, I came to it through the art and noticing a sort of pattern, a cluster of works
00:03:33 - and began to ask questions about, well, what is affecting that shift for him? You know, we often think of art historians often historically have located Manet as the, the kind of, birth of modern art that, that the modern begins with Manet. Now, that is a often contested, you know, it's often contested terrain. but one cannot deny the fact that Manet, shifts the conversation around what art looks like, what art means,

"Exploring the Intersection of Modern Life and Artistic Practice: Manet in Context"

00:04:16 - So we can sort of look to some various definitions and, and modern art is one of those terms that is incredibly complex and you have to unpack. but we can look to a couple of definitions maybe to understand what that means. And we can look to two of mayonnaise's contemporaries, Aire being notably one of them who very importantly writes, the Art of Modern Life. And, and then Iola, the, the naturalist writer and, and very important political journalist who is a contemporary and friend
00:04:57 - of creation seen through a temperament. So I take both of those sort of frameworks as, as ways of contextualizing who mayonnaise is because he is situated in this moment that recognizes a new sort of definition of daily life, which we call the modern. And at the same time, we begin to see a, a changing sense of what art can do, and that it is filtered through a particular kind of temperament. And man's temperament is important because as many scholars have have noted, he is somebody who is caught in the conflicts of his moment.
00:05:38 - what we would call the world of the bourgeois and the world of Bohemia. So he's in Paris, for his career, grows up very affluent, grows up with a lot of privilege. His father is, involved in sort of judicial circles. He is a bureaucrat, and he decides, Manny decides that he is not going to follow in the sort of, straight pass of, of bourgeois bureaucratic education. He wants to, he wants to study art.
00:06:18 - of parents being frustrated by their students becoming artists, his father was too. And, and man aid decides though that, he's going to study art not through what has historically been the pathway for, for people in, in France, which is the called the very sort of, conservative, but you know, quite well established institutional way of studying art. He decides he's going to study with, Tuma Couture, who is, an artist who had come up through the, the ol de boza, but who had established his own
00:06:59 - And I say this because it's important to recognize that from the very beginning of his career, Manet is setting himself on a path that is not, that is, is set tangentially to the establishment, and it is set oftentimes in counter distinction to it. So choosing to study with couture was an important aspect of what I would call Manny's ethos from the very beginning as an, as an artistic practitioner. and then as we see his career evolve, we see that he,
00:07:39 - this world of privilege that he's grown up in. And then this world of Bohemia that is increasingly becoming visible in the middle of the 19th century, during the second empire, by which I mean people living on the margins, rag pickers, buskers, people who prostitutes, people who are, operating on the periphery of society. This becomes the key fascination for Manet. So we, what we see him effectively do through his artistic practice, is make that changing societal foundation visible to the world.

"Manet's Art and the Changing Dynamics of 19th Century Paris: A Reflection on Society, Disease, and Modernity"

00:08:24 - identified between the changing bourgeois landscape of Paris, which is fundamentally altered during Napoleon II's reign and the marginalia of society who are, are in increasingly, being pushed beyond the center of the city. so one of the most, two of the most important works that we identify with Mene, is the de, which is the, his picnic on the grass where he positions,
00:09:04 - among some very middle class gentlemen. And then Olympia, same muse, the, the model victory in, position as a contemporary prostitute. And part of why these works were so controversial, part of why we begin to locate the modern with works like these and with Manny's early practice, is that he brings a sort of unvarnished view of daily, modern life to the French salon, which upends it. People have been used to looking at things relegated
00:09:44 - idealized nudes. His nude has dirty feet and armpit hair, and though she's beautiful, she is unequivocally of her time. And so part of what Manne contributes to the conversation, I always say more broadly beyond the fact that many people think he is the, the father of modern art, or even the father of Impressionism, though he is, he's never part of the aste and name who would become the impressionist school, is that he is a amazing observer of this moment of change. And it's a moment of change that impacts the rest of,
00:10:28 - economics terms, politics, but certainly also aesthetics. The shifts in medical treatment are not divorced from the other shifts that I've just mentioned in no small part, because if we think about the civic restructure of Paris under Napoleon, the third one of the driving engines was hygiene and the containment of disease. So Paris, like many other urban capitals across Europe, had suffered from a series of e epidemics, historically, but, but potently in the 19th century. So the cholera epidemic of 1832 is a notable one. And one of the things that we see Napoleon II
00:11:09 - the structure of Paris, throughout the 1850s and 1860s, is to make it a hygienically sound city. So that's important because at the same time too, in this moment, by virtue of shifts in medical practice, one might even say by virtue of an increased secularization, we have a sort of new period of medical and scientific inquiry. So Louis pester, very famously in this exact moment that we're talking about in the 1860s, before, many become symptomatic with syphilis.
00:11:49 - refashioned, Lou begins to come up with his germ theory, which will radically change the way we understand the communication of disease and, and, and contagion itself. So I would say generally then the sort of visibility and management and, and public management of disease is shifting in this very moment. and and part of that too, Michelle Fuco very famously has said that in this period, you begin to have a shift in, in terms of how disease is

"The Intersection of Disease and Artistic Practice: Examining Manet's Response to Illness in a Changing Cultural Landscape"

00:12:31 - And one of the things that changes is this recognition that the sick bed is a, is a space to kind of laboratory for investigation. And so we even see this in the notebooks of, of Louis Pastore when he's doing his rabies studies, is that he notes the distribution of, his vaccine, but he also notes the weather and he notes the conditions and he notes details about his patients. And so there is this increasing sense of a more holistic understanding of not just disease itself, but disease within an environment,
00:13:14 - They need to be controlled, they need to be contained. So when we look acutely, that's sort of the broad scope of the situation. When Manet becomes symptomatic and when it's clear he's, he is suffering from syphilis, though we, we understand that he probably suffered from it for most of his adult life, but when he becomes symptomatic, there is a sort of new apparatus for how to deal with disease that has emerged in France as a result of these shifts. I've just described, infrastructural shifts, conceptual shifts, experimental shifts, so
00:13:55 - takes place across a lot of different spaces and involves a lot of different experimental treatments. But one thing I would just mention too, which goes back, circles back to this idea of Bohemia, is that because syphilis, of course, is a sexually transmitted disease, part of what we see happening is in the same period this push towards hygiene infrastructurally in Paris, we see a regulation of sex and we see a regulation most acutely of prostitution under the second empire. So I, I think those things can't be divorced.
00:14:38 - of Manny's life is not just that it affects him physically, but that it reveals something about the world in which he lives, and, and the shifts culturally, politically infrastructurally, around disease and particularly sexually transmitted disease in its management. The two principle works that I focus on for this period, as I said, are works that are done in the 1878 into 1879. And one is, a man with crutches, and the other is called the convalescent. And these two works probably evid, you know,
00:15:20 - as I say, recuperating from disease or recuperating from, from physical trauma. Now, what's interesting about them to me though, is not just that they make this sort of idea of the vulnerable bo vulnerable body visible, but also that there are works that are done in ink. And this is important because we often think of Manet as a painter, and certainly his most canonical works were, but from the beginning of his career, he was fascinated by printmaking, and he was fascinated by the, the process of, of working with, with ink.
00:16:02 - whereas the convalescent is an etching. But I put them in this sort of similar umbrella category of experiments in ink because I, I think it's important that they sit also at the periphery of mayonnaises practice, which suggests to me that they are in some sense more private contemplations. And part of what I think too is, is important about this, is that both of these works were reproduced iteratively, by which I mean, he came back to them multiple times and redid them multiple times.

"Artistic Iterations: Exploring Manet's Exploration of Disability and Convalescence"

00:16:41 - And, and we can learn a lot by the kinds of works that artists repeat or come back to kinds of subjects, the kinds of forms. And in both these cases, a man with crutches has two iterations. It has, its first iteration from 1878, which is held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York is, as I said, a work done, drawn in ink of a man with an amputated leg. And it's a work done on transfer paper, which I think also is indicative of this kind of, if not ephemeral, certainly tangential or experimental quality of the work.
00:17:24 - or many returns to the subject. Again, we don't actually know the sequencing. They might have been done at the exact same time. They're slightly different, in a work that's held by the ashmolian. And so these two works, again, the sort of repetition of them suggests a increased preoccupation with this, this man with an amputated leg. Incidentally, we also see this figure emerge in a painted work at the same time. So it's sort of haunting mayonnaise's practice in a sense. And I spend a lot of time thinking about this particular piece because though we can't, you know, look into the future
00:18:04 - but mayonnaise's leg is amputated at the end of his career. So after he does this work, and I only mention that because I think part of what I'm trying to draw out is that the pains he is feeling, the effects he is having, most notably with his legs and with the stability of his legs, which is brought on by the, the syphilitic infection, I think makes him gravitate to this contemplation of what is, in some senses, formally seen as an incomplete body or a, a restructured body. Now, the convalescent is different. It's an image of a woman.
00:18:44 - Susan Leh, who is his wife. And it is a very sort of close cro image of a woman probably sitting in a chair, but by, by virtue of the title, we know she is convalescing, right? She's recovering from something. And again, this is a work done in ink. This is an etching. So it's meant to be reproduced, but what's also telling about this particular experiment, and I keep using that term deliberately 'cause I think, Manet is a consummate experiment. this experiment he does in three states, by which we mean he is taken the plate, the etching plate,
00:19:26 - So we have this sort of evolution of the image itself over time through the, the different states of the etching process, which again tells us that he's ruminating on this idea of what it means to, to convalesce. And the image that we see here is not just of a woman sitting in a chair closely cropped, but staring off into the distance and the kind of sense of isolation, the sense of confinement. the sense of, being limited that convalescing often necessarily requires, is really perfectly captured, I think, in that particular work. So
00:20:07 - of medical practice, many never really participated in this world. And, and we can see, we can map a whole, you know, broader shift in how medicine is disseminated, experimented with, but also visualized in this moment. and so what I think is also fascinating for me, unlike a lot of the other figures whose work I have focused on as of late who are working expressly in the realm of one might call medical illustration, is that this is not something Manny is obsessed with. And it's interesting too, to go back to where I began in this conversation about how he chose

"The Intersection of Disease, Artistic Practice, and Empathy in Manet's Works"

00:20:51 - of course, fundamental, the boza and that sort of conservative, institutional way of studying, artistic representation. Mane didn't go that route. He didn't study, study, you know, viscera and anatomy in the way a lot of his contemporaries might have. And I say that only because I think what we are seeing in the way he approaches disease in this particular cluster of works is less this idea of one might say physical symptoms and more focused on their effects, right?
00:21:36 - What does it do to have to endure bedrest? These are what he is revealing through his works. And so public health reform, medical practice in this moment is important to the story only. In so far as we know that it's preoccupying a lot of Manny's time. He is undergoing hydrotherapy, he's getting four hour massages a day. he's going to a series of experimental treatments at Larry, which is a really expansive, initially cholera hospital
00:22:16 - and trying to manage this disease. So I think this idea of disease management is important because it demonstrates just how influential these symptoms were to mannas daily life. So the conclusions from this work as, as I sort of hinted to at the beginning is a reconsideration of Manny's later practice and a sort of repositioning of potentially the importance of his syphilitic condition to the way he approached not just style, but for me subjects
00:22:58 - So that's what I am quite literally fleshing out through this particular study. In terms of future research, my work has really focused as of late on the relationship between pathology and artistic practice and how that has manifested in things like portraiture in particular. Now, I don't think it's incidental that the works I have focused on in this Manet study as a kind of test case are in some sense very wedded to portraiture. They are single images of people, and I think that's because portraiture and,
00:23:39 - but single portraits of individuals has the potential, to cultivate that, that empathetic connection. So for instance, another project I've been working on is actually related to the practice of Louis past, who also incidentally trained, in, in pastels and in in portraiture, in artistic practice and wanted to be an artist. but that, that pastor himself, looks to this relationship between visualization and disease in his published studies in the
00:24:46 - he takes a series of photographs of his rabies patients, which I think are also really poignantly connected to this idea of cultivating empathy and thinking of his patients as people, not just as specimens. So broadly concerned that my, my work is sort of going in the direction of this rethinking of the modern body broadly, but this connection between, as I said, pathology, artistic practice, and portraits.

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