Seeing Laure: Race and Modernity from Manet’s Olympia to Matisse, Bearden and Beyond Denise M. Murrell Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 2014 © 2013 Denise M. Murrell All Rights Reserved ABSTRACT Seeing Laure: Race and Modernity from Manet’s Olympia to Matisse, Bearden and Beyond Denise M. Murrell During the 1860s in Paris, Edouard Manet and his circle transformed the style and content of art to reflect an emerging modernity in the social, political and economic life of the city. Manet’s Olympia (1863) was foundational to the new manner of painting that captured the changing realities of modern life in Paris. One readily observable development of the period was the emergence of a small but highly visible population of free blacks in the city, just fifteen years after the second and final French abolition of territorial slavery in 1848. The discourse around Olympia has centered almost exclusively on one of the two figures depicted: the eponymous prostitute whose portrayal constitutes a radical revision of conventional images of the courtesan. This dissertation will attempt to provide a sustained art-historical treatment of the second figure, the prostitute’s black maid, posed by a model whose name, as recorded by Manet, was Laure. It will first seek to establish that the maid figure of Olympia, in the context of precedent and Manet’s other images of Laure, can be seen as a focal point of interest, and as a representation of the complex racial dimension of modern life in post-abolition Paris. It will then examine the continuing resonance and influence of Manet’s Laure across successive generations of artists from Manet’s own time to the present moment. The dissertation thereby suggests a continuing iconographic lineage for Manet’s Laure, as manifested in iteratively modernizing depictions of the black female figure from 1870 to the present. Artworks discussed include a clarifying homage to Manet by his acolyte Frédéric Bazille; the countertypical portrayal by early modernist Henri Matisse of two principal black models as personifications of cosmopolitan modernity; the presentation by collagist Romare Bearden of a black odalisque defined by cultural, rather than sexual, attributes metaphoric of the cultural hybridity of African American culture; and direct engagement with Manet’s depiction of Laure by selected contemporary artists, including Maud Sulter and Mickalene Thomas, often with imagery, materials and processes also influenced by Matisse or Bearden. In each case, the fitfully evolving modernity of the black female figure will be seen to emerge from each artist’s fidelity to his or her transformative creative vision regardless of the representational norms of the day. The question of what, if anything, is represented by Manet’s idiosyncratic depiction of the prostitute’s black maid has seldom been comprehensively addressed by the histories of modern art. The small body of published commentary about Manet’s Laure, with a few notable exceptions, generally dismisses the figure as meaning, essentially, nothing -- except as an ancillary intensifier of the connotations of immorality attributed to the prostitute. Manet’s earlier portrait of Laure, rich in significations relevant to her portrayal in Olympia, is even more rarely discussed, and typically seen as a study for Olympia, rather than as a stand-alone portrait as this analysis suggests. The image of Laure as Olympia’s maid is frequently oversimplified as a racist stereotype, a perspective that belies the metonymic implications of a figure that is simultaneously centered and obscured. It is in the extensive body of response to Laure’s Olympia pose by artists, more than by historians, that the full complexity and enduring influence of the figure’s problematic nuance can be seen. This dissertation, like the artists, takes its cues from the formal qualities of Manet’s images of Laure, in the context of precedent images and the fraught racial interface within Manet’s social and artistic milieu, to suggest new and revisionary narratives. It suggests that Manet’s Laure can be seen as an early depiction of an evolving cultural hybridity among black Parisians– visible in Laure’s placement, affect and attire—that took shape during the early years of the newly built northern areas of Paris that are today home to some of the largest black populations in central Paris. Within this context, an iconographic legacy of ambivalent yet innovative modernity can be asserted for the Laure figure –extending from Delacroix to Matisse, Bearden and beyond. This lineage can be seen as parallel to the long-established pictorial lineage for Manet’s figuring of the prostitute Olympia. What is at stake is an art-historical discourse posed as an intervention with the prevailing historical silence about the representation and legacy of Manet’s Laure, and by derivation about the significance of the black female muse to the formation of modernism. This analysis suggests that the black female figure is foundational to the evolving aesthetics of modern art. It suggests that Olympia’s standing as a progenitor of modern painting can only be enhanced by breaking through the marginalization of Laure’s representational legacy. It asserts that it is only when the bi-figural significance of Manet’s Olympia is recognized that the extent and influence of Manet’s radical modernity can be most fully understood. Contents Table of Contents i List of Illustrations iv Acknowledgements xvii Dedication xxii VOLUME ONE INTRODUCTION 2 Manet’s Laure and the Histories of Art 3 Laure in the Context of Manet’s Paris 7 Bazille’s Homage to Manet 13 Matisse at the Villa Le Rêve 16 Bearden in Harlem and Paris: Collaging Cultural Hybridity 23 The Anterior as Muse in the Art of Maud Sulter and Mickalene Thomas 29 CHAPTER ONE: From the Négresse as Type to a Portrait of Laure Introduction: Manet’s Three Paintings of Laure 35 The Ethnic Demographics of Manet’s Paris 37 A First Awareness:Children in the Tuileries and the Black Presence in Manet’s Paris 39 Manet’s Portrait of Laure: From Type to Individual 45 Laure Within Manet’s Gallery of Outsiders 47 Racial Interface and Anxiety within Manet’s Artistic Circle 52 Laure as Index: Paris’ Free Black Working Class 60 Portrait of Laure : From Exotic Symbol to Cultural Hybridity in Modern Paris 64 i Stand-alone Portrait or Study for Olympia? 77 CHAPTER TWO: Laure of Olympia Laure of Olympia : Metonymy and Hybridity in an Emergent Black Paris 81 The Maid as Modernity: The Revision of Precedent 81 Abolitionist Aesthetics and Republican Sentiment 87 Artist Intentionality: Duality of the Baudelairean Muse 94 Modernity and Composition: Laure Constructed and Unbound 101 The Dissipation of Attention: Modern Modes of Viewing Olympia Across Time 105 A Fragmented Audience and Differentiated Modes of Attention 110 Bazille’s Homage to Manet: The Iconographic Legacy of Laure Begins 112 CHAPTER THREE: Matisse at the Villa Le Rêve: Toward a New Baudelairean Muse Introduction 127 Matisse’s Modernism: From Primitivism to the Cusp of Modernity 132 Tradition and Modernity: The Fleurs du Mal Illustrations 139 The Modernizing Turn: Toward a New Baudelairean Muse 147 Matisse and the “New Negro” Aesthetics of the Harlem Renaissance 151 Modernity and Cosmopolitan Beauty in the Final Easel Paintings 157 Influence and Critical Reception of Les Fleurs du Mal 161 CHAPTER FOUR Bearden in Harlem and Paris: Collaging Cultural Hybridity Introduction 164 ii The Reclining Nude: Continuity and Revision 167 Manet and Boucher: Archival Sources for a Synthesizing Pose 172 Re-Situating the Object of Desire 174 The Fragmentary Development of Revision 184 Bearden and the School of Life in Paris 187 Paris Blues Revisited 193 Bearden, Matisse and Baudelaire: Affinities in the Absence of Encounter 194 Martinique as Eden and Inspiration 196 Collage as Manifestation of Identity and Influence 197 The Quilt as Metaphor: Legacy and Materiality 199 Collage as the Visualization of African American Identity Formation 202 Situating Patchwork Quilt Within the History of Modern and Contemporary Art 204 CONCLUSION Seeing Laure: The Anterior as Muse in the Art of Maud Sulter and Mickalene Thomas Maud Sulter: A Recuperative Mode of Vision 210 Mickalene Thomas: Presenting a Trés Belle Négresse of the Present Moment 215 BIBLIOGRAPHY 221 VOLUME TWO Illustrations iii List of Illustrations 1. Title Page: Seeing Laure: Race and Modernity from Manet’s Olympia to Matisse, Bearden and Beyond 2. Manet, Children in the Tuileries, 1861 (Rhode Island School of Design); Manet, Portrait of Laure, 1862 (Pinacoteca Agnelli, Torino); Manet, Olympia, 1863 (Musée d’Orsay) 3. Edouard Manet, Children in the Tuileries, 1862 4. A New Modernity for a Genre Type--Edouard Manet, Children in the Tuileries, 1862; Timéon Marie Lobrichon, Promenade des Enfants, ca. 1870, oil on canvas; Pierre Bonnard, Promenade des nourrices, frise des fiacres [Nannies' Promenade, Frieze of Carriages], 1897, screen with lithographed sheets 5. A New Modernity for a Stereotype of Popular Culture -- Edouard Manet, Children in the Tuileries, 1862; Caricature of Alexandre Dumas père as nourrice for theatre, Le Charivari, 1858 6. A Representation of Everyday Life -- Edouard Manet, Children in the Tuileries, 1862; Anonymous, Femme noire tenant une petite fille sur les genoux –with foulard, ca. 1865; Anonymous, Nourrice noire tenant une petite fille sur les genoux, ca 1856 (source of photographs Gallica Bibliothèque Numerique– BNF) 7. Formal Qualities: modern vs genre --Edouard Manet, Children in the Tuileries, 1862; Feyen, Baiser enfantin, 1865 8. Artists and Black Residents in 1860s Paris – 9th and 17th arrondissements -- Purple -Black Parisians; Red -Manet and his circle; Green –Later generations of blacks in Paris 9. Artists and Black Residents in 1860s Paris 9th and 17th arrondissements –List of Names 10.