The New Luncheons on the Grass

Good evening contemporary art lovers!
As you may know The Luncheon on the Grass painted by Manet in 1863 was one of his most controversy paintings. A naked woman sitting between two well-dressed men should be ashamed and not so confident! This painting inspired many artists such as Cezanne or even Picasso. More recently numerous artists reinterpreted the Manet's painting in their own ways...

Alain Jacquet, a French artist representative of the American Pop Art movement, was one of the first artists who made his own vision of the Manet's Luncheon. Painted in 1964, his Luncheon on the Grass, a diptych, is a silkscreen on paper laid on canvas. The difference between both is obviously the technique. Jacquet was focused on the study of the dot and of the screen. Here are depicted a gallery owner, an art critic and a painter. In the style of the Impressionists it's beautiful from afar and it's less easy to see the details when you are closer.

In 1982, John De Andrea, an American sculptor, made a beautiful sculpture inspired by the Manet's painting. He is associated with the photorealist, Verist and superrealist schools of art. He pays attention to all the details of his sculptures. Here hair, brows and pubes are made into plastic scalps a few strands a time. Moles, tiny veins and scars are revealed by the oil polychrome. Clothes are taken apart and reassembled on the fully painted bodies...

Rip Hopkins is an English photographer who made photoreportages and documentaries in many countries. For him, photography is a tool with which one he can reveal intellectual and aesthetic expression. This photography was exhibited in 2008 at the Paris Photo Art Fair in Paris. The naked male figure is a response to the Manet's female figure. Both are directly looking at the viewer without any gene neither embarrassment. It's also a dialogue between the past and the present...

New York-based artist, Mickalene Thomas explores notions of beauty through works of art made of rhinestones, acrylic and enamel. She inspired by many different sources such as the 19th century Hudson River School, Manet, Matisse, Bearden... Her "Dejeuner sur l'Herbe: Trois Femmes Noires" depicts three figures who aren't typically seen in the canon of figurative painting and influences of Black Popular culture and Pop Art are obvious. The interesting thing is that one of the figures is actually in the style of a man dressed in drag. This work of art was commissioned by the MoMA and will remain on view on the window of the 53rd street entrance until December 2010.

Pepe Smit lives and works in Amsterdam. Her photographs are full of cynicism, humor, sexual references, taboos... All of her pictures seem to be very joyful and sweet but after having looked a few minutes their darker side appear.  Here are represented a mother and her daughter. They are both wearing pink pretty dresses with roses. The role of the male figure is reduced to a simple object which is supposed to help women in their everyday lives: he's naked and his back, covered with a tablecloth is their kitchen table. It's easy to say that this picture was made by a feminist artist!

Did it make you hungry?...