Double portrait in the interior – Newspaper Kommersant No. 57 (7502) dated 04/04/2023

One of the most visited museums in Paris, the Musée d’Orsay, which is responsible for 19th-century French art, has opened an exhibition that rivals any exhibition blockbuster this season: Manet / Degas. Browser “Kommersant” Kira Dolinina I am ready to advise those who did not get to the Vermeer mega show in Amsterdam to rebook a ticket to Paris. Luxurious battle of the titans is guaranteed to them.

Edouard Manet (1832-1883) and Edgar Degas (1834-1917) are two absolute geniuses of French art. It was a genius, because with all the proximity of both to the obvious “-isms” (the realism of Courbet and the impressionism of Monet and company), they clearly could do without their contemporaries, brothers in the brush. It was easier for both of them to talk to the greats of great art history – from Titian and Rembrandt to Velasquez and Ingres. The statement of this fact does not offend the impressionists beloved by all, but rather refers to the essence of the current exhibition. It is about friends / rivals who are perfectly aware of their own and their “opponent’s” greatness, connected by a thousand social, cultural and even financial threads, playing with each other in their art in quotations and giveaways, nodding to each other over the heads of their contemporaries and inseparable even when not at all old Manet dies, leaving Degas to experience his loneliness in art for more than three long decades.

Manet or Degas? This question is not among those formulated by the curators of the exhibition. But it will definitely occupy almost every viewer. This question for French art is akin to those that bearers of Russian culture ask themselves in literature (“Mandelstam or Pasternak?”, “Akhmatova or Tsvetaeva”?). I really want to answer that both, but in fact you know for sure that one is closer to you than the other. In this case, there are more than enough reasons for choosing: the exposition includes 200 works (92 paintings, 55 graphic works, documents). The distribution of the authors is almost fair, although Degas, of course, more – he has an individual part of the exhibition, which is called “After Manet”. The entire first floor of the Musée d’Orsay is given over to the exhibition, which only emphasizes the greatness of its heroes.

The Musée d’Orsay is basically a tricky museum. Until the visitor reaches the coveted Impressionists, which are hidden on the second floor, he needs to go through the front first (Orsay is a former train station, the splendor of the main hall with side loggias is rigidly determined by the architecture itself), and there, when there is no such current exhibition, a continuous Salon and academic painting . So, of all the future Impressionists, only Degas always hangs on the first floor – it is in him that the curators see the strongest connection between the new art and the academic canon. The current exhibition puts Manet next to Degas in this regard – together they will go from ambitious young artists whose goal was to see their work in the Salon, to the absolute titans of new French art, which spilled out of the Salons, crammed from floor to ceiling with thousands of works, into new halls and galleries that had just arisen, with which the new Paris renewed by Baron Haussmann flourished.

Against this backdrop of a great history of art, the drama of the personal and professional relationship of the two artists is played out. There is so much in common between them that it seems natural to compare. Biographically: two eldest sons in families of big bourgeois, were born two years apart; both were sent by their fathers to study law, both fled to art; both had money for travel and a habit of cultural consumption from childhood; both were called up as reservists during the siege of Paris in 1871. Professionally: both recklessly copied all over Europe and, of course, spent hours in the Louvre; both bypassed the School of Fine Arts and preferred the private “academies” of great artists, where they first of all learned to paint the nude. The themes are close (portraits, nudes, scenes of everyday life, the modern city), and the circle of acquaintances (the Morisot family, bohemia, writers, artists, critics). A bunch of direct intersections: sometimes they are friends, sometimes they quarreled; Degas writes a lot to Manet, but it was one of the portraits that caused a major quarrel (Manet did not like the way his wife was depicted, and he cut off almost half of the canvas, Degas got angry and took the gift back); and, of course, the “Degas collection” – the works of the deceased “rival” he collected 15 years after Manet’s death, the pursuit of which, exchange for his own and others, collecting the second version of the “Execution of Emperor Maximilian” (1867–1868), cut into pieces, he devoted a lot of time and effort.

However, the main meaning of the exhibition is not born out of direct coincidences. Two brilliant artists worked side by side, and each created his own version of a new painting. It is the enchanting quality of this painting – its freedom, radicalism, direct conversation with past eras and their geniuses – that puts Manet and Degas above their contemporaries. And yes, the bilious misanthrope Degas is stricter and more virtuosic in composition, and Manet is more cheerful and cheerful both in painting and in life. Degas sculpts a tragedy from a portrait and sees biblical motifs in the scene of beach life. And the light Manet, enthusiastically playing with gray, pink and black together and apart, makes the bourgeois spit and poke canes at Olympia, not realizing that he created, perhaps, the most severe portrait not of a person, but of his time. To see them together, without satellites and the canons of perception imposed in advance, is a rare success.