Woman In Black At The Opera Analysis

The two pieces of art I will discuss is Edouard Manet’s ‘Olympia’ and Mary Cassatt 's ‘Woman in Black at the Opera’. Manet’s Olympia was not critically accepted, the reaction to his painting was negative, only four critics out of sixty were favorably disposed to Olympia. Olympia was a derivative of Titian 's Venus. In 1863 the critics and the viewers didn’t know how to take Olympia, “they were unable to cope with so many novel factors and so they were unable to categorize the picture and so were unable to analyze it or understand it in any context” (Laurence, 2012). Nowadays we are more open minded and are able to see the painting in a different light. Olympia was created in 1863, it is believed to be a painting of a prostitute. Manet created Olympia during the Victorian era of the nineteenth century, “sexuality didn’t have a public place any longer, in other word it was a repressed period for sexuality”(Nikpour, 2013). Nude paintings in Manet’s time, were known for being represented in a soft subtle style. Manet replaced the stereotypical painting that showed women as perfection rather than what real women are… real. He moved from the light, hairless women and painted them with flat colours,hard dark edges and signs of hair under the armpits, legs and stomach. Manet replaces the dog in Titian 's Venus and replaces it with a cat, this could represent the fact that she is free in her choices. The most interesting point of this painting is the fact that she is looking straight