June 3, Musée d'Orsay

Professor Anne Catherine Abessis guided us through the Musée d'Orsay, a former railway station that now houses an incredible collection of paintings, sculpture, and photography from the late nineteenth through the early twentieth century. Like the building that houses it, much of the work at the Musée illustrates the artists' re-appropriation of the conventions of the past in surprising and challenging ways.

The lecture took as its frame the pivotal salon of 1863, and two nudes that were displayed that year. Why was Alexandre Cabanel's Birth of Venus praised by critics as the paragon of Classical sensibilities and good taste, while Manet's Olympia outraged and offended its viewers? Anne Catherine's discussion invited us to consider the ways in which culture and tradition inform how we perceive, and how the visual artists of the turn-of-the-century challenged convention by challenging accepted ways of rendering 'reality'. By situating works by Manet, Corbet, and Delacroix within their historical contexts, Anne Catherine helped us experience familiar works with the original force of their avant garde innovation.