Seeing Manet's "Olympia," the Blackpink lyrics "착한 얼굴에 그렇지 못한 태도" (a sweet face with not-so-sweet behavior) resonate with me. Although the painting adopts a classical and elegant style, it's actually quite provocative and revolutionary.
Édouard Manet's "Olympia" is often regarded as the first work of modern art because it broke with traditional representations of the nude figure, challenging societal norms and artistic conventions of its time. Before "Olympia," many paintings depicted mythological figures like Venus, presenting them in an idealized and elegant manner, often catering to sexual objectification. Manet subverted this by painting a real person, not a goddess, and naming her "Olympia," a name associated with prostitutes, thus confronting the viewer with a more direct and unidealized form of reality. His approach was revolutionary because he maintained the pose typical of Venus nudes but replaced the idealized figure with a confrontational, real-life model.
Furthermore, Manet shifted the focus from the precise representation of the subject to the use of color and composition. The painting’s stark contrasts and the inclusion of elements like the black cat and the maid emphasize this change. Manet's use of color dynamics, rather than classical beauty, was a provocative move away from the sexual objectification prevalent in art at the time. This focus on the elemental aspects of painting, like color and form, over the subject, marked a significant transition towards modernism in art.
조주연, 『현대미술 강의 순수 미술의 탄생과 죽음』(서울: 글항아, 2017)