A Modern Olympia FWN 614 1870 56cm x 55
Boy, has this painting been talked about! It’s the second of two by Cezanne (this is the better one painted five or so years after the first), as Cezanne’s version of Manet’s ‘Olympia’ of 1865: In Manet’s, naked Olympia sets her eyes squarely on the viewer, whereas Cezanne places himself squarely looking at her as the guy sitting on the step. The interpretations vary widely on a spectrum from being a revelation of Cezanne’s sexual urges/frustrations to a depiction of the artist weighing up his subject. Suffice to say: Cezanne in the 1860’s (and the 70’s) was producing History-classical type stuff that was designed to make a comment about his contempories (this is entitled The ‘Modern’ Olympia!). The urge to make a point recedes over the later decades as he discovers that the best way to make your point is not by reacting to others, but from deep in your own soul: the beauty of lifelong learning.
The “history-classical” genre of painting was all about the moral of the story – describing in paint what was the moral of the Bible scene, or the mythological story. They were grand designs, meant to educate, provide a lesson, maintain or sometimes say something about the social order of civilization. In those days, it would cost a farm worker’s annual salary each year to send someone to one of the new Lyceum teaching colleges. Cezanne’s father had provided for his three children; Cezanne, well-educated and intelligent, but when in Paris, he would still like to put on the act of being an ignorant peasant in dress, in manners, and also in accent – speaking in a rough unintelligible Aixois dialect. At that time, 75% of trainee teachers were daughters and sons of farm-working peasants – lowly paid, doing a few jobs to make ends meet, under the control of the local priest, and not highly valued. The 20 years up until 1870 saw education still very much provided and controlled by the Church; but that was changing. Does education lead to social unrest and instability or does it inculcate values of sobriety and thrift? The answer presented by the new rich was that they needed more and more workers in the towns who could read and write, and who could understand each other! Free, compulsory, secular, primary schooling was introduced in 1881 with 67 ‘Ecoles Normales’, headed by lay school mistresses: the school became the monument of the Third Republic – the separation of church and state was complete.
“Education is the great engine of personal development. It is through education that the daughter of a peasant can become a doctor, that the son of a mine worker can become the head of the mine, that a child of farm workers can become the president of a great nation. It is what we make out of what we have, not what we are given, that separates one person from another.” Nelson Mandela