MLS 542 - Manet’s “Olympia”

Credit(s): 4
Manet’s painting is now a highly regarded work of art, admired for its frank depiction of a nude prostitute and her black servant, as well as its innovative style. When it was first exhibited in 1865, however, it caused a scandal for the same reasons. This course will examine the painting’s intersections of sexuality, race, and social class-seen as offensive at the time–in the context of rapidly changing cultural, social, economic, and demographic conditions in mid nineteenth-century Paris.