Olympia, Manet and Modernization

A painting of a nude woman, a Negress and a cat changed the way of art, class and modernity in 1865. It was a time of ordre moral, a time when bourgeoisie and primness dominated high brow culture. Edouard Manet rebelled against this by rattling the world with his painting of Olympia. Since its unveiling, at the Salon in Paris, reactions ranging from horrified shock to scholarly criticism ignited and still persist today. T.J. Clark, …

…viewers to another area of intellectual understanding by exploring the role of an artist as a provocateur. "This peculiar freedom with the usual forms of representation was later held to be the essence of Olympia...it made the founding monument of modern art; and certainly it was a painting which revealed the inconsistencies of its manufacture and breathed a kind of skepticism at the ways that likeness was normally secured..." <Tab/>