A Bar at the Folies-Bergère
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A Bar at the Folies-Bergère, painted and exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1882, was the last major work by French painter Édouard Manet before he died. It depicts a scene in the Folies Bergère nightclub in Paris, depicting a bar-girl, one of the demimondaine, standing before a mirror.
The painting is filled with contemporaneous details specific to the Folies Bergère. The distant pair of green feet in the upper left-hand corner belong to a trapeze artist, who is performing above the restaurant's patrons.
The beer which is depicted would have catered not to the tastes of Parisians, but to those of English tourists, suggesting a British clientèle. Manet has signed his name on the label of the bottle at the bottom left, combining the centuries-old practice of self-promotion in art with something more modern, bordering on the product placement concept of the late twentieth century.
But for all its specificity to time and place, it is worth noting that, should the background of this painting indeed be a reflection in a mirror on the wall behind the bar as suggested by some critics, the woman in the reflection would appear directly behind the image of the woman facing forward. Neither are the bottles reflected accurately or in like quantity for it to be a reflection. These details were criticized in the French press when the painting was shown. The assumption is faulty when one considers that the postures of the two women, however, are quite different and the presence of the man to whom the second woman speaks marks the depth of the subject area. Indeed many critics view the faults in the reflection to be fundamental to the painting as they show a double reality and meaning to the work.
The increased use of the new technology of photography began to free artists such as Manet to do more than merely imitate life, at any rate, Manet was confident enough to take liberties with literal transcription for the sake of composition.
The painting has been interpreted as a modern paraphrasing of Las Meninas by Diego Velázquez.
Trivia
The Eddie Murphy film Coming to America (1988) featured a version of A Bar at the Folies-Bergère in which the people in the painting were African.
The painting The Bar (1954) by Australian painter John Brack, which depicts a comparatively grim Antipodean bar-room scene, is said to be an ironic reference to A Bar at the Folies-Bergère.
A copy of the painting also hangs in Edie Britt's living room in the hit comedy Desperate Housewives. The allusion to the painting is appropriate, as critics have seen the barmaid as a whore, and Edie "lives in a cul-de-sac and yet sees more traffic than the local highway".
A modernized copy of the painting by illustrator Carlotta A. Tormey appeared on the May 2007 issue of The East Bay Monthly. The painting moves the setting to a Peet's Coffee & Tea.
Canadian artist Jeff Wall was inspired by Manet's work and made references to A Bar at the Folies-Bergère in his own work called "Picture For Women" (1979)
