The Café-Concert, about 1878-79, Édouard Manet, oil on canvas
The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, Maryland, 37.893
Transcript
MUSIC: Delicate piano
SCOTT ALLAN: This is a fantastic painting.
NARRATOR: Let’s pull up a chair in this crowded brasserie to find out why. Associate Curator Scott Allan.
SCOTT ALLAN: There’s a real sense that this is a kind of random slice of life. It really I think captures sort of a flavor of modern life in Manet’s Paris.
NARRATOR: Who’s here? A typical cabaret audience.
SCOTT ALLAN: You have this very kind of dapper dandy on the right with a sort of mustache and goatee and monocle and top hat. His arm is resting very nonchalantly on the pommel of his walking stick and he’s kind of looking off to the right. Next to him is fairly drably dressed, working class girl whose shoulders are slouched. She’s got a lit cigarette in her hand. They’re shoulder to shoulder practically, but they’re just strangers next to each other.
NARRATOR: A third figure, wearing a uniform and apron, completes Manet’s triangular composition.
SCOTT ALLAN: Between them, you see a waitress who’s got one hand on her hip and is just draining a beer. (laughs) Presumably, she should be either serving or clearing off a table.
NARRATOR: The painting is as densely packed as the bar, without a central focal point. Not even the performer at this café-concert takes center stage. That’s her in the upper left corner, a cartoon-like image in profile, seen only as a mirror reflection.
SCOTT ALLAN: Once we cue into the fact that it’s a mirror reflection, you can see a kind of gilt frame on the side of it. Then you start figuring out what’s going on. And you're like, "Oh, okay. The gentleman is looking towards the stage perhaps." It becomes this kind of visual, spatial puzzle.