Twelve Views of Manet's Bar

Bradford Collins

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9780691036915, 9780691036908
• eBook ISBN: 9780691223964
• Topic: Art
• Subtopic: History of Art

Bradford Collins has assembled here a collection of twelve essays that demonstrates, through the interpretation of a single work of art, the abundance and complexity of methodological approaches now available to art historians. Focusing on Manet's A Bar at the Folies-Bergère, each contributor applies to it a different methodology, ranging from the more traditional to the newer, including feminism, Marxism, Lacanian psychoanalysis, and semiotics. By demonstrating the ways that individual practitioners actually apply the various methodological insights that inform their research, Twelve Views of Manet's "Bar" serves as an excellent introduction to critical methodology as well as a provocative overview for those already familiar with the current discourse of art history. In the process of gaining new insight into Manet's work, and into the discourse of methodology, one discovers that it is not only the individual painting but art history itself that is under investigation. An introduction by Richard Shiff sets the background with a brief history of Manet scholarship and suggestions as to why today's accounts have taken certain distinct directions. The contributors, selected to provide a broad and balanced range of methodological approaches, include: Carol Armstrong, Albert Boime, David Carrier, Kermit Champa, Bradford R. Collins, Michael Paul Driskel, Jack Flam, Tag Gronberg, James D. Herbert, John House, Steven Z. Levine, and Griselda Pollock.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Notes on Contributors
• Preface
• Introduction: Ascribing to Manet, Declaring the Author: Richard Shiff
• Counter, Mirror, Maid: Some Infra-thin Notes on A Bar at the Folies-Bergère: Carol Armstrong
• Manet’s A Bar at the Folies-Bergère as an Allegory of Nostaligia: Albert Boime
• Art History in the Mirror Stage: Interpreting A Bar at the Folies-Bergère: David Carrier
• Le Chef d’Oeuvre (bien connu): Kermit S. Champa
• The Dialectics of Desire, the Narcissism of Authorship: A Male Interpretation of the Psychological Origins of Manet’s Bar: Bradford R. Collins
• On Manet’s Binarism: Virgin and/or Whore at the Folies-Bergère: Michael Paul Driskel
• Looking into the Abyss: The Poetics of Manet’s A Bar at the Folies-Bergère: Jack Flam
• Dumbshows: A Carefully Staged Indifference: Tag Gronberg
• Privilege and the Illusion of the Real: James D. Herbert
• In Front of Manet's Bar: Subverting the “Natural”: John House
• Manet's Man Meets the Gleam of Her Gaze: A Psychoanalytic Novel: Steven Z. Levine
• The “View from Elsewhere”: Extracts from a Semi-public Correspondence about the Visibility of Desire: Griselda Pollock
• A Select Bibliography for Methodological Issues in Art History
• Illustrations