Thursday, February 26, 2009

Olympia's Look

In Olympia’s Look, Susan Vreeland describes the strife Edouard Manet’s wife Suzanne went through surrounding his death. As a Dutch woman in France, she felt unattractive, due not only to her build, but also due to her lack of mastery of the language. Whether her feelings were due to the actions of her husband, or her husband’s actions were due to her supposed unattractiveness, he was a very large flirt with many women of Paris. Despite all of this, Suzanne was a very obedient wife. Her Dutch upbringing had taught her that there was nothing more sacred than the bond between man and wife, while her husband lived by the French lifestyle.

                Suzanne Manet’s obedience as a wife is portrayed by Vreeland in a couple instances. While going through the pain and suffering of syphilis, Edouard is always cared for by his wife. When going to scorn Victorine Meurent, she describes how she nursed him through his illness, and that many women would not have the strength to do so. How she had talked him through his night terrors, knowing her own were only moments away. All this was due to a letter Victorine had sent shortly after the funeral, requesting money Edouard had promised her. In Vreeland’s story, Suzanne knew that an obedient wife would carry out her husband’s promise, no matter how opposed to it as she was. The story makes it seem as though she would have also, if Olympia had sold for a large amount.

                Not only was Suzanne Manet an obedient wife, she was also a very strong woman. In the story, Suzanne is very subdued to her husband, which I believe was due to her view of the sanctity of marriage, and the position she felt a wife should hold. However, she is shown to have a very strong personality. When she suspects her husband’s infidelity and sees him slip a letter to Helene, she is very demanding of the woman. The pain she had felt due to her husband’s many “collaborators” drove her to adopt an even more steadfast personality. She became very independent after his passing. She had arranged an auction of the paintings to supplement her income. She also portrayed her strong character when confronting Victorine Meurent. In no uncertain terms she had told her that she was merely a “fling” of Edouards, and would never, nor could ever hold the intimate position of being his wife. Suzanne even retold the amputation just to punish Victorine, and in a way as he had cared for Victorine, her husband. As the adopted quote from William Congreve’s “The Mourning Bride” says; “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.”

                Vreeland does give a sense of who Suzanne will become. This is done through a few events. The arrangement of the auction and her starting the fire with no hesitation shows that she is very independent and most likely will spend the rest of her life alone, only because she is perfectly capable of living without the help of someone else. Her gentle demeanor towards Albert gives the sense that she will not shut herself off completely from the world and Edouard’s family. Finally, her sense of regret of describing the amputation to Victorine and adding Collaborator  to Isabelle’s letter, then sending it, show that she has a sense of closure with her husband’s exploits and will not live the rest of her life filled with bitterness.

                The only criticism I have of Vreeland’s writing is the same that many had expressed about The Yellow Jacket. Her transitions are very ethereal, if existent at all, which makes Olympia’s Look very hard to follow if one doesn’t already have a large amount of knowledge of the artist at hand, in this case Edouard Manet.

Tuesday, February 3, 2009

Who is that Person? Revealed

Titian. Pietro Aretino. Galleria Palatina, Palazzo Pitti, Florence, Italy.
Italian Renaissance Art. 1 Feb. 2009
  http://www.italian-renaissance-art.com/Titian.html

MLA

"Pietro Aretino." Encyclopedia Britannica. 2007. Britannica.com. 2 Feb. 2009 <http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/33552/Pietro-Aretino >.

From this source I found a very concise background of Pietro Aretino. He was born in 1492 and lived until he was 62. He lived in Italy and spent his life as a poet, writer, and dramatist. He was known as quite the rebel of his time. His real name is not known, but he created the name he is known by while posing as the bastard son of a noble. In his younger years he tried his hand as a painter. He then moved to Rome and did what he was most well known for, writing “Lewd Sonnets” (Sonnetti lussuriosi). These sonnets were the reason he was forced to leave Rome. While there he had also written satirical works of notable people. He had gained most of his wealth through gifts of kings and nobles who feared the political damage he could do with his writing. He was close friends of the painter Titian, who painted many portraits of him, including the one I speculated on for this assignment.

"Pietro Aretino."
Mark Harden's Artchive. 1 Feb. 2009

<
http://www.artarchiv.net/doku/museum/Aretino.htm>.

This source spoke of the salacious works of Aretino and all the controversy he created. It explains how he had become known as one of the lewdest and wittiest writers throughout Italy. He did this by writing a fake last will and testament as if it were for Pope Leo X’s pet elephant. In it he had willed the animal’s genitals to a cardinal. One of his most famous works were sonnets he wrote in 1524 to accompany Giuliano Romano’s drawings of sixteen sexual positions. There work together “produced one of history’s most notorious works of erotic art” as the source states. Even Casanova refers to this work of Aretino’s in his memoirs over 200 years later. Aretino was nearly imprisoned for these works. A print version of these ‘Sonnetti Lussuriosi’ along with drawings was created and quickly burned by the Church, leaving none to survive.
 

Paolucci, Antonio. "The Portraits of Titian." Mark Harden's Artchive. 2 Feb 2009 .

This source analyzed some of Titian’s works and even included some quotes from Aretino. It tells how Aretino wrote of Titian’s “sense of things in his brush” and then goes on to state that these things were not only physical features of the subject, but of the things that should be highlighted and those that should be subtle which insinuated the social or political standing of the subject. Titian had a sense of creating the “ideal persona of the individual” which concisely made up the subject’s identity to both subject and viewer. It goes on to say that Aretino wrote that his own portrait was “more than a veristic or psychological likeness which breathes, whose pulse throbs and spirit moves in the way I do in life.” Aretino obviously approved of his friends depiction of himself. The portrait depicts Aretino’s “emotional violence, of an irreverent and corrosive intelligence.”