Analysis Of Bar At The Folies-Bergere

A classic example of this is Edouard Manet, A Bar At The Folies-Bergere, 1881-82, [see fig1] conveys the bustling atmosphere from inside Paris’s first music hall, The Folies-Bergere. In Manets painting the entire scene seems to be reflected in a mirror, creating confusing viewpoints of an audience watching a performance. In front of the mirror stands a barmaid; appearing to be disjointed from the activities in front of her, she gazes out of frame. Her rouged cheeks and ungloved hands signify her status as a working girl, a much lower class than the people she serves, she appears to be isolated with a wall of mirror creating a barrier between her and her surroundings. the folies-bergere was notorious as a place to pick up prosititues and the woman he used in this painting may have well been just
Portraits account for more than half of manets work he once said “You would hardly believe how difficult it is to place a figure alone on a canvas, and to concentrate all the interest on this single and universal figure and still keep it living and real.” Manet had visited the Folies-Bergere numerous times and made many sketches so when he created this work it was far from a realistic portrayal, instead a reconstruction untrue to the halls actual spatial arrangement. As an impressionist artist he alleges perspective impossibilities as we see a male figure on an imposing scale to the right of the painting supposedly reflected to be standing in front of her before the bar, in the reflection they are seem to be engaging but in full face the relationship is absent. Although the body language suggests interaction his eyes seem to glance past her rather than at her. He is outside the painter’s field of view and remains to be an optical illusion perhaps representing the divide in class Manet has selectively chosen to