Analysis of Fragonard's 'The Bolt'-- Written December 2015

Discovering Psychology

            She sat in her usual place, face towards the instructor, scribbling notes on anything that seemed as if it was potentially important. There was so much to remember, to study, that she felt as if being interested was no longer an option- she could hardly analyze the last fifteen minutes of her life in two hours; it would be impossible to grasp these thousands of years!

            Still, her interest was piqued periodically--details about the lives of artists, the stories behind their paintings--stories intrigued her. It was stories that kept her attention at least partially focused on the screen in front of her and her faraway instructor. Analyses, architecture, paint types and mediums; she could remember these if necessary, but stories held her captive.

            It was just such a story that held her attention hostage on this particular afternoon. It was a story of a young girl and her lover—or captor—struggling together as a young male hand reached for the bolt to the door. Fragonard’s The Bolt told a fascinating story.

            At first, it was obvious the young girl was intent on escape. Her arm across the shoulder of the man, pressing against his neck; her head thrown back as if to bring herself as far from his as possible. The arm not engaged in pushing him away is stretched out, as if trying in vain to impede his progress towards the bolt.

            But her expression was puzzling. Neither excited nor frightened, angry nor passionate—indeed, it almost seemed as if the girl was a passive participant. Or perhaps a willing one, guarding emotion until the lock is safely bolted, biding her precious time until she knows all is safe.

            It was fascinating enough attempting to discern the intents of the subjects of the painting, but the girl found herself pondering yet a deeper question- what was happening in the mind of the artist?

            This is a question not only asked, but studied in depth by a number of scholars in regard to a number of paintings. Throughout this essay, I will study three: Edouard Manet’s “Olympia”, along with his “Le Dejeuner sur l’herbe”, and Pablo Picasso’s “Les Demoselles d’Avignon”. These are some of the most deeply analyzed paintings in the entire history of art; each is worth a great deal of study and discussion.

            Manet paints a pretty, though puzzling picture with his “Le Dejener sur l’herbe”. Painted alongside “Olympia”, “Le Dejener sur l’herbe” is a portrait of a picnic—but not a typical picnic. Two gentleman, wearing indoor clothing (Edouard Manet’s Le Dejeuner), sit in the company of a young woman entirely in the nude. Relaxed, at ease, this young woman looks, not at her companions, but at the viewers of the painting; unashamed, content, and almost challenging. In the background, another woman presumably readies herself to bathe, though this woman wears a robe of some kind. She seems to be searching for something along the bank of the hazy river, smiling as if with a pleasant memory.

            To the untrained eye, a great many details of this painting go entirely unnoticed. From the composition of the painting to the items scattered about, symbolism is everywhere—the question of experts around the world is, what is it?

            In the title of his analysis, Rolf Lӕssᴓe describes Manet’s puzzling piece as “a veiled allegory of painting”, suggesting that Manet’s intentions were not altogether for entertainment or even to puzzle people. The word ‘allegory’ places an emphasis on political and moral meaning; therefore, before he has even begun his introductory statement, Lӕssᴓe has already pinpointed the piece as a challenge—either to the government, the widely accepted standards of morality in his time, or both.

            Lӕssᴓe explores five general points of the painting—the quality of the nude, the “studio-atmosphere”, the indoor hat of the gentleman to the viewer’s right, the “likeness of the reclining pointer to Manet”, and the implications of a “painting-within-a-painting” to the right of the scene. Lӕssᴓe goes into a depth of detail not possible in this piece, but I will attempt to summarize, and analyze his points.

            The first point made by Lӕssᴓe is the quality of the female nude—she looks relaxed, at ease, almost as if she is a model in a studio. Indeed, Lӕssᴓe continues, there is other evidence of this indoor studio quality simply in the apparel of the gentleman to the right: His hat, as pointed out by a number of scholars, is an unusual thing for him to be wearing in his current position. “…a hat like that was not used in open air, but was of a type designed for use at home or at any rate indoors….”

            Lӕssᴓe further points to the observations of Niels Gösta Sanblad, who said, “It cannot be denied that in Le Dejeuner sur l’Herbe something can be traced of the conflict between the two realities which lay at [Manet’s] disposal. He does not make it clear to us whether it is a part of Saint-Ouen or a part of the studio in Paris which he wishes to present”. The statements bring to mind a slew of questions, none of which have a straightforward answer; Manet simply didn’t want to be understood.

            Lӕssᴓe brings to light another point also, which is this: Manet seems to have put himself in his painting. Using his two brothers as models, Manet seems to have made a self-portrait—wearing, as described by Antonin Proust, his trademark “jacket or a coat tied around the waist, trousers of a light colour…wearing good shoes and armed with a light walking stick.” This and other observations guide the reader to the tentative conclusion that Manet has indeed endowed the scene with his own likeness, though for reasons not entirely discovered.

            The “painting-within-a-painting” effect is the last discussed by Lӕssᴓe. He discusses the quality of the bathing woman in the background of the painting, and the less detailed, less finished approach of her surroundings than those of the central trio. The right side of the painting, he describes, may well be a furtively inserted “painting-within-a-painting” effect, as seen in Manet’s Woman with a Jug and La Pêche, along with others.

            There are two points which I find important when it comes to Manet’s Le Dejeuner sur l’Herbe, and those are: first, that Manet, for unknown reasons, drew much of his scene from the lower right hand corner of Marcantonio Ramondi’s The Judgment of Paris, which depicts a strikingly similar threesome to Manet’s, the main difference being the clothed state of the male subjects in the image. Secondly, that the model for the striking nude centerpiece, Victorine Meurent, was also the model for his nude Olympia.

            Upon first viewing Olympia, Robert Rey wrote,”I remember my own first meeting…with Olympia, and the oddly painful shock which the picture gave me. I was afraid when I saw this pallid form, this face where the skin seemed stretched over a piece of wood. Olympia frightened me like a corpse—yet I felt weighing upon me the maleficence of that terribly human regard.”

            This eerie statement refers to the way Olympia was painted, but similarly fascinating theories have erupted over the years as to why. She is thought to be based off of not one, but a multitude of similar paintings, including Titian’s Venus of Urbino, which is the most strikingly similar to Olympia; Fransisco Goya’s Naked Maja; and Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres’s L’Odalisque à l’esclave. Jean Marc Nattier’s Mademoiselle de Clermont at the bath and Xavier Sigalon’s La Jeune Courtisane both employ the use of a colored servant, which Manet may also have drawn from (Manet).

            A number of other paintings hold similarities to Olympia, but the most fascinating painting suspected to be in connection with her is Alfred Steven’s Palm Sunday or Dévotion, in which “a young girl, discreetly and elegantly dressed and coiffed, plac[es] sprigs of boxwood above the portraits of her parents…” (Manet). The model for Stevens’s painting is suspected to be his mistress, Victorine Meurent… the very model for Manet’s Olympia (Manet’s Olympia).

            No matter the base, however, Olympia is a clear step away from the traditional female nudes of Manet’s day. Rather than connecting her to a goddess or historical figure, thus removing the reproach of her sensual nudity, Manet portrays her as a modern-day woman of his own age, complete with her black handmaiden and all the adornments associated with an extravagant costume. In addition to this blatant erotica, Manet adds a small black cat, back arched and spitting, to the end of the carefully adorned maiden’s bed. “The implication of the kitten’s response,” writes Kathleen Adler, “is that the viewer, who becomes at once Olympia’s male visitor and separate from the fictional spectator, is in the room with her.” Add to that the controversial nature of her dark-skinned slave: “a sort of female gorilla, a grotesque in India rubber” (Manet’s Olympia), and already the danger of conflict is apparent. Olympia is far from conservative; rather, Manet seems to be spitting in the face of propriety with the unspoken intent to do and paint whatever he pleases (Manet).  

            The painting was received in just such a manner, as well—badly. When, after being completed for two full years, Manet finally displayed it in the 1965 Salon des Refusés, Roughly sixty out of eighty critics mentioned Olympia, and with 2,243 paintings hung in the Salon, this number was astonishing. The controversial nature of the painting, along with the carefully planned display of Olympia alongside his Christ Mocked, led to its eventual placement at the farthest end of the display, “…at a place where even the worst daubs had never been hung…”(Jules Claretie, Figaro, Manet).

            Jules Claretie gives a grand summary of Manet’s works:

…Once upon a time there was a young man called Manet who, one fine day, bravely exhibited among the rejected paintings a nude woman lunching with some young men dressed in sack suits and capped with Spanish sombreros. Many cried shame, others applauded, all noted the audacious fellow who already had something and who promised much more. We find him again this year with two dreadful canvases, challenges hurled at the public, mockeries or parodies, how can one tell?

            Though the entire meanings of Manet’s works are not entirely known, we can be certain he was noticed—and was that not his intent? “You, Degas,” Edgar Degas recalls Manet telling him, “you are above the level of the sea, but for my part, if I get into an omnibus and some one doesn’t say ‘M. Manet, how are you, where are you going?’ I am disappointed, for I know then that I am not famous!”

            And now, exploration of an entirely different artist is in order: Pablo Picasso. Specifically his Les Demoilelles d’Avignon; though not his most famous, this is arguably his most controversial—indeed, there is no straight answer as to its meaning.

            A quote by Picasso in response to a statement by Matisse gives us some background, however: “I am proud to say that I have never looked upon painting as an art intended for mere pleasure or amusement…. No: Painting is not there just to decorate the walls of a flat. it is a means of waging war against the enemy.” Picasso produced many great works—gorgeous scenes of beauty and serenity. When he was just fifteen, he painted Science and Charity, a touching piece exploring “the mixed emotions of a sick woman’s caregivers.” And yet, in 1907, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon was born; the first painting to appear in the form of Cubism, it was “a transitional picture, a laboratory, or better, a battlefield of trial and experiment; but it is also a work of formidable, dynamic power unsurpassed in European art of its time” (The Importance of Pablo Picasso).

            Janet Sayers describes Les Demoiselles l’Avignon thus: “Obviously shaped by Cezanne’s… Three Bathers… and by Matisse’s painting, The Joy of Life... Picasso openly incorporated a squatting figure from Three Bathers in Les Demoiselles d’Avignon.” He also used ideas from Henri Poincaré, who studied the fourth dimension; “In his 1902 book La science et l’hypothése, Poincaré had written, ‘in the same way that we draw the perspective of a three-dimensional figure on a canvas… so we can draw that of a four-dimensional figure….” Picasso’s work, then, was meant to show—what? The fourth dimension? A fascinating turn from the popular notion of his insanity; indeed, cubism itself, of which this is considered the first work, is dedicated to the idea of a multi-dimensional world displayed through art.

            However, made up of angular shapes, straight lines, and abrupt color changes, the picture does almost look amateurish at first glance, or even the work of an insane person. In fact, Sayers wrote an entire psychoanalysis on this painting alone—beginning with a detailed description of the piece, she then explored the work of Freud, Hegel, Jung, Klein, and a number of other psychologists who have studied Picasso’s groundbreaking work. Freud leads us to the conclusion that art enables us to express fears and emotions for past experience previously unavailable to us, and Hegel’s studies support that point. Jung, unlike Freud, wrote specifically about Picasso’s work: “He denounced Picasso’s work as schizophrenic. The neurotic searches for meaning, he said… ‘It is as though he had been overwhelmed and swallowed up by it [meaning],’ Jung declared, ‘and had been dissolved into all those elements which the neurotic at least tries to master” (Picasso Cure).

            Sayers concludes her research by stating that Picasso “provides a cure… for the neglect by psychoanalysis of… the images needed for thinking and mentalising as a means of developing what has recently been called mentalisation-based treatment of personality disorders” (Picasso Cure).

            So, did Picasso intend to cure personality disorders with Le Demoiselles d’Avignon, or was he simply insane? Did Manet design his controversial works simply to remain famous long after his death? Was Fragonard’s The Bolt a story of passion or escape? The answers are still uncertain, but one thing is clear: each has created an exciting, thought-provoking, and fulfilling journey for his viewers; and for that we are all grateful.

Works Cited

Adler, Kathleen. Manet. Topsfield: Salem House, 1986. Print.

Lӕssᴓe, Rolf. “Edouard Manet’s “Le Dejeuner sur L’Herbe” As A Veiled Allegory Of Painting.” Artibus Et Historiae 26.51 (2005): 195-220. Art Full Text (H.W. Wilson). Web. 27 Nov. 2015.

Sayers, Janet1, jvs@kent.ac.uk. “Picasso Cure: Personality, Psychoanalysis, Les Demoiselles D’avignon Centenary.” International Journal of Art Therapy : Inscape 12.1 (2007): 39-48. Education Source. Web. 27 Nov. 2015.

Smith, John A., and Chris Jenks. “Manet’s Olympia”. Visual Studies 21.2 (2006): 157-166. Academic Search Premier. Web. 27 Nov. 2015.

Swisher, Clarice. The Importance Of Pablo Picasso. San Diego: Lucent, 1995. Print.