Exhibition Overview
Transcript
MUSIC: Delicate piano
NARRATOR: Welcome to Manet and Modern Beauty: The Artist’s Last Years.
SCOTT ALLAN: Well, the show really began when The Getty acquired the painting Jeanne, or Spring….
NARRATOR: Scott Allan, associate curator of paintings at the Getty
SCOTT ALLAN: It became apparent that that painting was really emblematic of a lot of Manet's interests late in his career…
NARRATOR: Whether he was in Paris or his suburban retreat, he was drawn to subjects that evoked pleasure—fashionable women and their stylish ways or natural beauty found in fruit, flowers, and gardens.
Emily Beeny is associate curator of drawings at the Getty.
EMILY BEENY: These are all, in a way, more intimate kinds of work and also suggest a different set of concerns at the end of his life. So an interest in flowers, fashion, femininity. Perhaps for all of these reasons, the late work has too often been written off by art historians as minor, slight, suspiciously feminine.
SCOTT ALLAN: I always had a soft spot for his late bouquets especially, there are some of the most exuberant things he ever painted that the sense of color, the incredibly luscious brushwork… these are paintings that have tremendous power and freshness. This is Manet at his most distilled.
EMILY BEENY: You may think you know who Manet is but hopefully the exhibition will show a very different side of his work.
NARRATOR: Your guides on this tour will be Scott Allan and Emily Beeny, along with the co-organizer of the exhibition, Gloria Groom, chair of European painting and sculpture at the Art Institute of Chicago.