(piano music playing)
Steven: We're at the Musée d'Orsay and we're looking at
Édouard Manet's, a portrait of Émile Zola,
who is a very important 19th century novelist.
Beth: And art critic and behind Zola is an image of
Manet's Olympia and Olympia seems to look down at Zola
and Zola was also a friend of Cézanne's,
so Zola is an important figure in this circle
and this is a really new kind of portrait,
something very different than a viewer would have expected.
It's ... It doesn't give us very much information
in the way that a portrait usually gives us
information, that is through the face.
Steven: Well, he's actually turned away from us.
I mean, you get a sense that he's at his desk,
at his studies and in some way, he's turned towards us
just for a moment, almost in a pause of reflection,
not to look at us as if we were the camera, for instance,
but we have, sort of, caught him in this odd,
three-quarters view, that's really almost a profile.
Beth: There is something that doesn't really register
emotion there. It's not that he looks like he's been
absorbed in thought and looked up from his reading.
There's a kind of illegibility in his face Steven: ... to the face, yeah.
and I think that quality of not being able to read
a narrative, something we see frequently in Manet's
work, we have it here in a portrait, where it's
incredibly frustrating, especially frustrating because
we want to have a sense of the person.
Steven: So we can't read his emotions
or his interior life through his face.
In a sense, there's a kind of flatness to the way
the face is rendered, but look also at the book
that is turned towards us. It is similarly illegible.
We can't read the text there.
So the artist is forcing us away from
the reading of the particular to a sort of
a broader kind of reading.
Beth: It's like the objects themselves have become
more important than the figure.
We have the Japanese screen behind him,
so we can see that interest in the art of Japan
that's coming so much into Europe
now that Japan's been open.
We see another Japanese print in the background.
We see a Velázquez print. Right Steven: That's right, the drinkers up at the top.
We have a little pamphlet on Manet that Zola has written,
which is also Manet's signature.
Steven: And then a lovely inkwell, which is also east asian.
I want to look at this composition, like, for just a sec.
Beth: It's a very, very complicated composition.
Steven: The figure is fit into a series of geometric shapes.
There's the right angle that is created by the frame
on the upper right.
Then you have askewed right angle from the book,
which almost functions as an arrow pointing towards
Zola himself and then Zola's body is an echoing right
angle, which is echoed again by the chair
and so you have this sort of this cascade of these right angles
who are moving from upper right down to lower left.
Beth: And then you get it again in the upper left
with the edge of the Japanese screen.
Steven: That's right, although in the opposite direction.
but yes, there is a kind of interest in
the two-dimensionality which is a reference again
to eastern art.
But that comes across also in the flattening of the face
and the ways in which the jacket is so dark
that you lose all of spatial definition there.
Beth: Yeah, it is very little modeling in the face.
There's little modeling in the clothing,
so there is a real flatness and in fact,
the space itself is very, very shallow
so everything is very close to us
and as you guess, there's a kind of irony there because
despite its closeness, I feel no closer to Zola.
Steven: You know, all of that paint remains paint.
All of that paint is almost like a Velázquez.
Beth: Yeah, I mean look at the chair.
Steven: And if you look at the books as well.
If you look at the inkwell. If you look at the feather,
the quill that comes out, the tools of Zola's trade.
Beth: There's very much a focus on reminding us
that this is paint on canvas and refusing, in a way,
to do the things that paint is supposed to do.
I do get a feeling of this image of a modern literary man,
a portrait of a man in his age in Paris at the end of the 1860s.
Steven: In a sense, the lack of focus of Zola
and it's such a curious thing to say,
because this is a portrait of Zola.
But the lack of focus on Zola, in a sense, he is leveled
with the things that he finds important,
the things that influence him,
the things that make up his art
and so this very modern notion of Paris being a place
where the world can come together,
you know, where the influence of the east asian,
where the visual, the literary, where all those things mix
and that art is born.
(piano music playing)