A Bar at the Folies-Bergère

A Bar at the Folies-Bergère

Artist	Édouard Manet
Year	1882
Type	Oil on canvas
Dimensions	96 cm × 130 cm (37.8 in × 51.2 in)
Location	Courtauld Institute of Art, London

A Bar at the Folies-Bergère (French: Un bar aux Folies Bergère), painted and exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1882, was the last major work by French painter Édouard Manet. It depicts a scene in the Folies Bergère nightclub in Paris. It originally belonged to the composer Emmanuel Chabrier, who was Manet's neighbor, and hung over his piano.

The painting

The painting is filled with contemporaneous details specific to the Folies-Bergère. The distant pair of green feet in the upper left-hand corner belong to a trapeze artist, who is performing above the restaurant's patrons.

The beer which is depicted, Bass Pale Ale (noted by the red triangle on the label), would have catered not to the tastes of Parisians, but to those of English tourists, suggesting a British clientele. Manet has signed his name on the label of the bottle at the bottom left, combining the centuries-old practice of self-promotion in art with something more modern, bordering on the product placement concept of the late twentieth century. One interpretation of the painting has been that far from only being a seller of the wares shown on the counter, the woman is herself one of the wares for sale; conveying undertones of prostitution. The man in the background may be a potential client.

But for all its specificity to time and place, it is worth noting that, should the background of this painting indeed be a reflection in a mirror on the wall behind the bar as suggested by some critics, the woman in the reflection would appear directly behind the image of the woman facing forward. Neither are the bottles reflected accurately or in like quantity for it to be a reflection. These details were criticized in the French press when the painting was shown. The assumption is faulty when one considers that the postures of the two women, however, are quite different and the presence of the man to whom the second woman speaks marks the depth of the subject area. Indeed many critics view the faults in the reflection to be fundamental to the painting as they show a double reality and meaning to the work. One interpretation is that the reflection is an interaction earlier in time that results in the subject's expression in the painting's present.^{[citation needed]}

The painting has been interpreted as a modern paraphrasing of Las Meninas by Diego Velázquez.

Jeffrey Meyers, in his Impressionist Quartet: The Intimate Genius of Manet and Morisot, Degas and Cassatt, describes the intentional play on perspective and the apparent violation of the operations of mirrors: “Behind her, and extending for the entire length of the four-and-a-quarter-foot painting, is the gold frame of an enormous mirror. The French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty has called a mirror ‘the instrument of a universal magic that changes things into spectacles, spectacles into things, me into others, and others into me.’ We, the viewers, stand opposite the barmaid on the other side of the counter and, looking at the reflection in the mirror, see exactly what she sees. Her own reflection, however, is not directly behind her, according to the strict rules of perspective, but at a right angle to where she’s standing. It seems to reveal her long hair, cheek, collar and back as she serves and chats to male customer. A critic has noted that Manet’s ‘preliminary study shows her placed off to the right, whereas in the finished canvas she is very much the centre [sic] of attention.’ Though Manet shifted her from the right to the center, he kept her reflection on the right. Seen in the mirror, she seems engaged with a customer; in full face, she’s self-protectively withdrawn and remote.” The first owner of this painting was the composer (and close friend of Manet) Emmanuel Chabrier.

Cultural references

The painting The Bar (1954) by Australian painter John Brack, which depicts a comparatively grim Antipodean bar-room scene, is said to be an ironic reference to A Bar at the Folies-Bergère.

Canadian artist Jeff Wall makes reference to A Bar at the Folies-Bergère in his own work Picture For Women (1979).

The movie The Private Affairs of Bel Ami (1947) faithfully references A Bar at the Folies-Bergère twenty nine minutes into the film with a look-alike actress, set and props as the main characters enter the establishment. The movie Coming to America has a reproduction of this painting altered with an African-American woman dressed in red.

See also

• Mirror

References

• Gary Tinterow, et al. Manet/Velázquez: The French Taste for Spanish Painting, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2003
• Merritt, Naomi. ‘Manet’s Mirror and Jeff Wall’s Picture for Women: Reflection or Refraction?’ Emaj (Electronic Melbourne Art Journal), Issue 4, 2009

External links

• Higher resolution version of the painting
• The Guardian
• An essay on this painting from the book Beauty and Terror by Brian A. Oard here