Manet was the artist who bridged the gap between realsim and impressionsim.  A devout follower of Courbet, the younger artist was eager to flex his artistic muscles in defiance of the Establishment.  He suceeded in finding his artistic muse in his depictions of cafe life in Paris, but it was in two controversal paintings that Manet found his true vocation.
    In 1862 Manet completed Dejuner sur LíHerbe (luncheon on the grass),  a painting which succeeded in thoroughly ruffling the feathers of art critics everywhere.  Dejuner depicts two nattily dressed young men in the middle of a picnic in a shady grove with a completely nude woman.  The sheer absurdity of the image put it in a class all by itself.  The surrealist antics of Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray were undoubtedly influenced by Manetís ability to juxtapose the real with the absurd.  Manet's chosen title also angered the critics and public because it offered no deeper signifcance to the painting.  Manet was a firm believer in the doctrine of Art for Artís Sake, which opened up to him a limitless world of opportunities for freedom of expression. Dejuneris an example of the artist taking liberties for aesthetic purposes alone. The nudity of the woman can be explained by the pleasing contrast betwen her warm fleshy tones and the sharp black of the men's suits.  The world of the canvas is a reality separate from the real world in which the same laws do not apply.

    Manet was one of the first artists to call attention to the process of of making art.  He thoroughly explored the concept of a painting being a flat surface layered with colored pigment. The Fifer,painted three years after Dejuner,is an example of a painting that appers to be in Courbet's words 'as flat as a playing card.'
 There is hardly any shading to lend the figure any sense os depth or modeling.  The solid light-grey backgroound also reinforces the idea that the painting is flat.   Like Dejuner, the painting is surreal in the sense that it consists an image taken out of any context it might have.   There is no hidden meaning or ideal behind the image of a boy in a costume: it is simply art for art's sake.

       Like his fellow rebel artist and mentor, Courbet,  Manet was eager to depict his working-class subject matter with a stark honesty.  Unlike Courbet, who came from the peasant class,  Manet was born into an aristocratic family.  His father was a government official who didnít hide his disappointment with his sonís chosen profession and lifestyle.  Manet lived and worked among the lower classes and in many cases was inspired by them.
    Olympia,perhaps his most controversial and important work depicts a reclining nude woman notoriously identifiable as a prostitute.  When the painting was exhibited in 1863 in the ìSalon de Refuseî it was greeted with contempt, outrage and bafflement by critics and friends alike.  Olympiais an empowering portrait of a woman who is self-employed and independant of the shackles of domesticity.  She has a sceptical-looking African attendant offering her flowers from a client. The shoking nudity of the painting is comapritivley not soshoking compared to similar nudes.  It is the confrontation that exists in the face and position of the woman in society that makes the paining erotically charged.

    It should be noted that Manet was not fond of stirring up controversy in his painting.  The artist proclaimed in a private exposition in 1867 that it was the "sincertiy" of his works that lent them their "character of protest."1  A Manet painting can be viewed as a "blague,"  an ironic joke satirizing the serious values of the Establishment.  Manet was the artistic embodiement of Baudelaire's dandy,  detachededly observing the changing world around him.  He contemplated an urban lonlieness in his paintings that was both sincere and undeniabley modern.
 

1  The Invention of the Avent-Garde by Linda Nochlin p. 13