Un Bar aux Folies-Bergère

Manet’s famous painting Un Bar aux Folies-Bergère never appealed to me. But now I realize its genius, and my spine tingles every time I see it.

The perspective looks all wrong. You’re staring straight at this barmaid, but her reflection in the mirror is way off to right. Even worse, her reflection is facing a guy who doesn’t appear in the main view!

But in 2000, a researcher showed this perspective is actually possible!!! To prove it, he did a reconstruction of this scene:

• Malcolm Park, Manet’s Bar at the Folies-Bergère: one scholar’s perspective.

Here is Park’s reconstruction of the scene in Manet’s painting. How does it work? In fact the woman is viewed from an angle! While the man cannot be seen directly, his reflection is visible!

This diagram, created by Park with help from Darren McKimm, shows how the perspective works:

We are not directly facing the mirror, and while the man is outside our field of view, his reflection can be seen.

Astounding! But it’s not just a technical feat. It allowed Manet to make a deep point. While the woman seems to be busy serving her customer, she is internally completely detached—perhaps bored, perhaps introspective. She is split.

To fully understand the painting you also need to know that many of the barmaids at the Folies Bergère also served as prostitutes. Standing behind the oranges, the champagne and a bottle of Bass ale, the woman is just as much a commodity as these other things. But she is coldly detached from her objectification.

The woman in the painting was actually a real person, known as Suzon, who worked at the Folies Bergère in the early 1880s. For his painting, Manet posed her in his studio.

Before I understood this painting, I wasn’t really looking at it: I didn’t see it. I didn’t even see the green shoes of the trapeze artist. I can often grasp music quite quickly. But paintings often fail to move me until someone explains them.

When Édouard Manet came out with this painting in 1882, some critics mocked him for his poor understanding of perspective. Some said he was going senile. It was, in fact, his last major painting. But he was a genius, and he was going… whoosh… over their heads, just like he went over mine.