Art of the Female’s Gaze

Edouard Manet’s Olympia and Pablo Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon are connected

with the main idea of confrontation. The paintings– which both depict “prostitutes1”– also both

depict these women as defiant, a stark address to the viewer in comparison to the false modesty

and helplessness women were normally depicted as in these times. This tension of the women

directly challenging the belittling male gaze is primarily achieved through how exactly these

women are portrayed to the viewer. For example, women in both paintings stray from the

socially acceptable (and expected) idea of false modesty. Despite the two oil paintings being

created over forty years apart (1863 and 1907, respectively), both seek to disrupt the social norm,

something that we still see today (and likely will continue to see in the future). Picasso and

Manet are not alone in doing so by confronting the audience with their views on women. Women

historically have, and still are, marginalized by the male-dominated hierarchy of the society

around us, and these paintings serve to teach and remind us of that. An unavoidable part of the

human experience is uncomfort. Equally as unavoidable, however, is creativity and the desire to

make art, whatever that may mean person to person. Throughout history, artists have always

found ways to express their pain, discomfort, and frustrations through their art, and seek to make

others feel (whether those feelings are positive or negative) and that is exactly what both Manet

and Picasso have done with Olympia and Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, respectively.

Edouard Manet’s piece– Olympia (housed in the Musee d’Orsay in Paris) is an incredibly

influential work. The painting, done with oil paint on canvas, aligns with the style of realism

popular in the 1860s when it was created. This style arose as a result of the changing industry
1
The term “prostitutes” harbors a strong negative connotation which many women protest against. Henceforth, the more neutral

phrase “sex-worker” will be used in its place.

and society around Paris over the course of the 19th century. The rise of science and the decline

of Romanticism paved the way for a more realistic style of painting. Broadly considered the

beginning of modern art, the realism art movement captured the world as it actually appeared,

unlike the preceding idealistic imaging. This style rendered historical and religious works as

equal to depictions of everyday life. Manet’s painting shows a young woman (the titular

“Olympia”), lying relaxed on a bed. She appears in the nude, wearing only a ribbon around her

neck, a flower in her hair, and slippers on her feet in addition to the delicate earrings and bracelet

she wears. At the foot of her bed is a small black cat, standing on the edge of the decorated fabric

underneath her. Standing at her bedside is another woman, presumably a maid or servant, who

brings her a bouquet of flowers. These elements all serve as symbols of Olympia’s wealth and

sensuality. Manet continues to break societal norms in this piece. Rather than being fixed to the

nude form in front of her, Olympia’s servant divides her attention to the bouquet of flowers as

well. The drapery on the wall and bedding surrounding Olympia also appears uninterested in her,

drawing a line away from her rather than to her. Another line unexpectedly drawn is that of the

seam of the wall behind her. Rather than leading the gaze directly to the subject's genitalia (a la

Venus of Urbino), the seam falls just to the right. All of this serves to deemphasize the naked

body the viewer sees before them. The body itself, harshly lit with off-white skin, fulfills the

same service. Manet shows his audience a woman in the nude, but refuses to show her in an

idealized manner, even going so far as to make the body itself unattractive. He is confronting and

refusing to conform to the tradition and standards of “academic art”. At the time of this work, the

artistic environment in Paris served these rules about how art should look, be, and make one feel.

Manet protests these principles which he thought should be cast out for a progressive outlook in

a then modern France.

 Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, a painting from Pablo Picasso in 1907, follows (or rather,

breaks) many of the same rules as Manet did forty years prior. Also a piece done in oil on

canvas, this artwork currently hangs in the MoMa, where it continues to confront its viewers

with its massive stature and revolutionary content. This piece, like many Picasso would become

known for, adopts a cubist style; a far cry from Manet’s realism. Cubism was an early

avant-garde movement of the 20th century wherein an object or figure is shown in an incredibly

abstracted form; sectioned and divided, then reassembled to create a distorted representation of

what it previously was. Cubist art was a protest against the structures of Renaissance art. This

piece depicts five female figures, who are also understood as sex-workers. Rather than

proportional bodies, these women appear as an angular mosaic of fractured and overlapping

parts. Each figure presents herself to the audience. The centermost two lock eyes with the

viewer, hands above their heads to show their chests. The left-most figure pushes back the

curtain– both metaphorically, with her direct eye contact, and physically, as she pushes a corner

of the background. Mirroring her on the right, one woman leans against the background while

the woman in front of her squats with her hands on her knees. All five figures share a dead-set

gaze at the audience of the painting. Intimidating already with their expressionless stare and

active poses, these women are also larger than life-size, with the canvas itself measuring in at

some eight feet by eight feet. Much like Manet did, Picasso also uses the women’s skin as

another controversy. The color of their skin makes their nudity much more abrasive and stark,

rather than a mere lack of clothes. Through all of this, Picasso aimed to challenge the viewer’s

comfort and standards. The size of the women and the painting itself, their locked-in stares, the

flat and splintered imagery all fulfills the main point of Les Demoiselles d’Avignon: to create a

sense of anarchy, both visually and contentwise.

 Historically, paintings of women in the nude were depicted with some homage to their

shame or desire to cover up, such as a hand over their genitals, or a face that turns away from the

viewer. In both Olympia and Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, however, the women seem to be

flaunting themselves to the audience, enticing them to look rather than shielding themselves from

sight. In Picasso’s painting, for example, the two center-most women stand with their arms

raised, showing off their chests, and their faces turned to look directly at the viewer. The figure at

the bottom right is crouched down with her legs spread, and also meets the eye of the viewer.

Even the figures in the back, with their heads turned, have an eye facing the audience. Similarly,

the titular figure in Manet’s Olympia does not look off to the side as many similar content

paintings at this time do. She also holds eye contact with the viewer. This small detail breaks the

invisible wall separating the viewer from the subject, no longer allowing the viewer to simply

look, but placing them in a two-sided interaction with what they’re looking at. By turning the act

of passively viewing their bodies into an involved action, both Manet and Picasso address that

these female bodies are not there to just be looked at– to just be consumed– but they are the

bodies of people, painted or not. In comparing Olympia and Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, we can

see that throughout history, addressing the disparaging treatment of women (and especially sex

workers) is important in order to evolve as a society, and that the art that inspires such evolution

can be done in a powerful and thought-provoking way, and that part of being human is to feel,

which is what both Manet and Picasso want their audiences to do with these pieces.