Screen - Dark Matter Archives

28 which is a thousand times better than the platitude and inertia ofPerhaps this alia podrida de toutes les CastiUes is not flatteringfor M. Manet, but all the same it is something. You do not29so many canvases on show in the Exhibition.Armed insurrection in the camp of the bourgeois: it is a glassmake an Olympia simply by wantingof iced water which each visitor gets full ill the face when he seesThjs is effective criticism, there is no doubt. But let me restrictthe BEAUTIFUL courtesan in full bloom.Painting of the school of Baudelaire, freely execu ted by a pu pilmyself to saying one thing about it. Ravenel - it is the achievementwhich first impreses us, I suppose - breaks the codes ofof Goya ; the vicious strangeness of the little faubourienne. womanof the night out of Paul Niguet, out of the mysteries of Pa ris andOlympia. He gers the picture right, and ties rhe picture down tothe nightmares of Edgar Poe. Her look has the sourness of someoneprematurely aged, her face the disturbing perfume of a fleurde mal; the body fatigued, corrupted ['corrum pu' also carries tbeBaudelaire and Goya: he is capable of discussing the image, halfplayfu lly and half in earnest, as deliberate provocation, designedto be anti-bourgeois: he can even give Olympia, for a moment, amean.ing "tainted', 'putrid'], but painted under a single transparentclass identity, and call her a petite faubourienne - a girl fromlight, with the shadows light and fine, tile bed and the pillowsare put down in a velvet modulated grey. Negress and flowe rsthe working-class suburbs - or a fille des nuits de Paul Niguel.insufficien t in execution, but with real harmony to t hem~ theshoulder and arm solidly established in a clean and pure light. Thecat arching its back makes the visitor laugl! and relax, it is whatsaves M. Mane t from a popular execution.De sa /o urrure tlOiTe [sic] et bruneSort un parIum 5i doux, qU'un soir}'en Ius embilume pour L'avoirCaresse [sic] une lois . .. rein qu·une.(From its black and brown fur / Comes a perfume sO sweet, thatone eve.ning / I was embalmed in it. from having / Caressed itonce . .. only once.)C'esl l'es prit lamilier du lieu;11 ;uge, il prtside, i/ inspireToutes chases d.:ms son empire;Peut-etre est-illee, est-it dieuJ(It is the familiar spirit of rhe place; / Ir judges. presides, inspires /AU things within its empire; / Is it perhaps a fairy. or a gad?)M. Mon et, instead of M. Astruc's verses would perJlaps havedone well to tilke as epigraph the quatrain devoted to Goya bythe most advanced painter oj Our epoch :GOYA-Cauchemar plein de chases incomwes Dc loetus qu'on fait cuire au milieu des sabbats , De vieilles au miroir et d'enfants toutes nues Pour tenter les demons ajustanr bien leurs bas. (Goya-- NighL-nare full of unknown rhings / Of foetuses cookedin the middle of wi tches' sabbarhs, / Of old women at the minorand children quite naked / To tempt demons who are making surerhei r stockings fit.)But getting tltings rigbt does not seem to enable Ravenel toaccede to meaning: it is almost as if brea king the codes makesmarcers worse from that point of vi ew: rhe more particu lar signifiers and signifieds are detected, the more perplexing and unstablethe totality of signs becomes. What, for instance, does the referenceto Baudelaire connote. for Ravenel? There are, as it were,four signs of that connotation in the text: the 'school of Baudelaire'leads on (1) to th e disturbing perfume of a fleur du "'