Art Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Art - Essay Example In Cassatt’s work, she uses very light colours and avoiding black producing a very romantic painting that depicts a mother and child. In Manet’s works, he disregards what was the dictum of impressionism by his characteristic use of black. Both artists are working from a Japanese style of design and perspective which according to many reports heavily influenced their paintings. According to pbs.org, Manet’s paints his forms quickly in rough brushstrokes clearly visible on the surface of the canvas. Instead of the carefully constructed perspective that leads the eye deep into the space of the painting, Manet offers a picture frame flattened into two planes. The foreground is the glowing white body of Olympia on the bed; the background is darkness. (Edouard Manet’s Olympia). The treatment of the subject matter is very different in both paintings. According to pbs.org, Manet chooses to paint a woman of his time -- not a feminine ideal, but a real woman, and a courtesan at that.(Edouard Manet’s Olympia).This woman is a self-assured prostitute and view of the public of the nineteenth century a scandalous painting which would have been destroyed by the public as reported by many people. According to the Guardian, â€Å"The subject matter is sensational - a nude who, in the eyes of 19th-century observers, was clearly a prostitute, in her trashy mules with a bootlace for a necklace, tucked in, to the ruffled white pillows and her skin is a bright, glaring white. The fully dressed black servant is featured, presenting her with flowers from one of her male companions.†(Olympia, Edouard Manet).In viewing the painting the prostitute clearly has a defiant and confrontational look which according to the Guardian, it is impossible to know whether her mood is one of melancholy or contempt.( Olympia Edouard Manet(1863)) On the other hand, Cassatt’s mother and child are much more easier and pleasurable to view. The â€Å"mother an d child† clearly depict the intimate love and bond between a mother and her child. According to Danielle Peltakian, â€Å"she painted in delicate brush strokes of pastel pigments typical of the style of Renoir and Degas. She created a romantic depiction of the female figure reminiscent of the early Italian renaissance Madonna and child†( American member of the french impressionists school:note print maker.) According to tfaoi.com, The mother in the painting exudes a sense of dignity and purpose that challenges conventional notions of decorative femininity.(Mary Cassat, Modern woman).According to Anne Higonet, Cassatt made the experience of tiny children's bodies a visceral pleasure, both for the mothers represented within her pictures and for us, the viewers of the pictures(Two ways of thinking about Cassatt).She goes further in explaining that Cassatt's picture joins the forms of mother and child. The integrity of the individual body, which we could also call its isola tion, is replaced by a formal fiction of merged bodies. Cassatt engages us in the joys of infant flesh. (Two ways of thinking about Cassatt). In comparing the two pictures by Cassatt and Manet, the differences in depiction of women is immense. In manet’s Olympia, the woman is depicted as an object, while in Cassatt’s Mother and child the woman is a subject. Mary Cassatt depicted the modern woman of the Paris. A feminist perspective of her work pervades most of the explanation and analysis of her work which describe her as expressing her