Capital, commodity, and consumption
Featured Artworks
A Bar at the Folies-Bergère
Édouard Manet (1882)
Édouard Manet’s A Bar at the Folies-Bergère stages a face-to-face encounter with modern Paris, where <strong>commerce</strong>, <strong>spectacle</strong>, and <strong>alienation</strong> converge. A composed barmaid fronts a marble counter loaded with branded bottles, flowers, and a brimming bowl of oranges, while a disjunctive <strong>mirror</strong> unravels stable viewing and certainty <sup>[1]</sup><sup>[2]</sup>.
Olympia
Édouard Manet (1863 (Salon 1865))
A defiantly contemporary nude confronts the viewer with a steady gaze and a guarded pose, framed by crisp light and luxury trappings. In Olympia, <strong>Édouard Manet</strong> strips myth from the female nude to expose the <strong>modern economy of desire</strong>, power, and looking <sup>[1]</sup><sup>[3]</sup>.
La Grenouillère
Claude Monet (1869)
Monet’s La Grenouillère crystallizes the new culture of <strong>modern leisure</strong> on the Seine: crowded bathers, promenading couples, and rental boats orbit a floating resort. With <strong>flickering brushwork</strong> and a high-key palette, Monet turns water, light, and movement into the true subjects, suspending the scene at the brink of dissolving.