RESEARCH ON FINE ARTIST: EDOUARD MANET

Moving onto the fine art aspect of the foundation course, I researched Edouard Manet. I also bought his book: "MANET by himself" which covers his whole life's endeavours of art.

At the beginning on the fine art course, we were set to make a collage of any kind. I looked inside the book and came across many portraits of people, ranging from paintings to drawings and other uses of materials. I cut out the figures and stuck them onto a A3 sheet of paper to create a contrasting poster showing the past versus the future.

Below shows my collage work:

This was a small introduction to how I used some of Manet's work for my collage.

After I formed this collage. I researched deeply into Manet's techniques and the transition from his realism and naturalism work into Impressionism, which is what he is renowned for.

A famous quote of his sums up the majority of his work:

"I paint what I see, and not what others like to see" 

Manet was a very assertive artist and he would bring forth his own visions into his work and he deliberately averted from conventional rules of painting. 

Manet was met in his early works with a lot of criticism especially criticism for his painting 'The absinthe drinker' His biggest critic being Thomas Couture, another influential french painter who commented:

 "does anyone paint something so ugly? My poor friend, there is only one absinthe drinker here, and this is the painter who produced this insanity" ... 

Before his Impressionism movement, Manet began combining full length portrait work and he would implement the theme of reality existing in the present time. Also, he would reject the concept of less is more attitude with his work. 

Finally, Manet's work was a style in which he would depict visual impressions of movement, especially with shifting effects of light and colours and focus on whole-tone scale. 

Taking away from my research, what inspired me the most was his famous quote, in which he asserted his own individuality into his work. This is in my view saying do not try to make a piece of work for others because it usually tends to be weak and making a piece of art for yourself and making it the way you want to make it will eventually reap you with reward because you cannot impress everybody and making your work to the best of your ability is more than can be asked.

I sourced my work from the following webpage:

Http://www.impressionniste.net/manet_edouard.htm