,11(,nrFFilmillmysell-;\1the risknprivilege.leitWoloiln[it,effort to•.':H 'Itother._('?1Iyper-,nahisio-,üieslarger,tedill the1s.NO(Bloom-ed: I forceillofdisin-il"than theindy and a,''By now, itwivedbyofgenderill111Iher(nlisrnandIn Front of Manet's Bar.Subverting the "Natural"JOHN HOUSETIE FIGUREconfronts the viewer frontally, directly. Centered in theimage, the barmaid's gaze engages our space, grasps our attention.Yet this is not the gaze of the classic portrait image which, Mona-Lisa-like, follows us around the room, confidently positing the sitteras the viewer's equal, or superior. Our engagement with the figure ismore oblique, more uncertain, more equivocal.Hung as the picture now is, we can move up close to it, andmomentarily imagine ourselves at the bar, the objects of the bar-maid's half-attention. But as soon as we step back to view the imageas a whole, we are irrevocably distanced from that gaze, and the com-plexities and oddities of the representation as a whole come intofocus-the illegibility of the space and the incongruities of thefamous mirror image.Ilowever,this "we" is problematic, in two ways. If we identify theviewer with the client at the bar, he is immediatelygendeted,definedin terms of male social spaces and social rituals; the male figure seenin the mirror image endorses this identification. And yet the picturewas made to be seen as fine art and in an exhibition context, by adifferent public, of both women and men, who would approach theimage with a quite different agenda.Moreover, for the picture's first viewers, at the Paris Salon in 1882,its imagery would have been far more complex and problematic thanitseems now, raising as it did a set of issues that were central incontemporary debates about the city and its social rituals andmorality-about "modernity" Likewise the picture's formal odditieswould have seemed far more pointed in 1882. The late twentieth-century viewer can readily accommodate the picture's forms within a"modernist" aesthetic which has come to legitimize far more extremedislocations of perceived reality. In its original context and for its233°,&&d.~rolCAL-ti5~Zv1Ew1~1r`~CS5AILIn this contextA Bar attheFolies-Bergèreattacked the norms incomplex and far-reaching ways. Most evidently, it denied a coher-ent, legible authorial position, by denying empathetic access to theimageofthe barmaid and yet juxtaposing it with a provocativelyengaged image in the reflection, and furthermore, in the most basicterms, by denying the author/viewer any secure foothold within thepictorial space. Beyond this, the stereotype of the barmaid's sexu-ality is questioned by the way in which the image is painted. Thegaze of the figure, penetrating deep into our space, is counteractedby the barrier of the bar and its contents, whose palpable physi-cality creates a problematic threshold. The mirror reflection chal-lenges any attempt to read the picture anecdotally or to define the"nature" of the barmaid. Its anomalies propose an alternative "real-ity" and its markings and disfigurements challenge the integrity ofthe principalimage.Thefortunfor these challenges was the walls of the Salon. Thepicture• wasmadeto be seen and judged as art; on an immediatelevel, its transgressions were artistic. By its insistent frontality and itsclear, huninous tonality, it proclaimed its difference from the mea-sured spatial organization and mellow tonality of the pictures aroundit.Butthesetransgressions also, and more fundamentally, challengedthe values that underpinned the normative vision of a legible andcoherent universe. As a whole, in its form as well as its subject,A BarattireFolies-Betgcre,in its complexities and calculated inconsisten-cies, presented a social world-the promiscuous world of boulevardentertaininents-whichwas anepitameof thetmcertafntiesof mod-ernity in the city.NOTESIam indebted to Kathleen Adler, Juliet Wilson-Bareau, Kate Flint, andSuz-annet:.Lindsay for their searching comments on the first draft of this essay;theyarenot accountable for the results. Among recent accounts of Manet'spicture, the following have been particularly useful: T. 1. Clark, ThePaintingof Modern Life: Paris intire Artof Manet and His Followers(New York, 1984);JulietWilson Bareau, "The Hidden Face of Manet," supplement toBurlingtonMagazine,April 1986; and Robert L. Herbert, Impressionism: Art, Leisure andParisian Society(New Haven and London, 1988). These are hereafter abbrevi-ated as Clark 1984, Wilson Bareau 1986, Herbert 1988.2461.loris-KarlHuysmans,"Les(Mies-Bergèreen )879," inCroquisParisiens(Paris, 1880, 1976 edition), 347.1 fie ambivalent status of theFolies-Bergeereisvividly shown by the uncertainty about how it should be classified in KarlBaedeker'sHandbookforParis.In the 1876 edition (50) it was listed as adistinct item at the end of the listing of legitimate theaters, while in 1878(56)itappeared at the end of theCafés(:hantants,with an indication that it aloneof them charged an admission fee.Among contemporary accounts, the following are particularly useful, inaddition to Huysmans':"Le Jardin des Folies-Bergère,"La Vieparisienne,24August 1878, 500, cited by Novelette [toss,blruietsBar at theFolies-Bergèreandthe MythsofPopular Illustration (Ann Arbor, 1982), 75;[ArnoldMortierl,LesSoiréesparisiennes,I(Paris, 1875), 283-85, and IV (Paris, 1878), 140-42(cited by Herbert); Pierre Larousse,()randdictionnaireuniverseldu XIXe siè-cle, premiersupplément(Paris, [18771), 828: ArthurPuugin,"Folies-Bergère,"in Lagrande encyclopédie,XVII (c.1891), 69(1-91.For discussions of the complexities of the notions of "popular" and "work-ing class" culture in these years, seeJacquesItancicie,"Good times or pleasure at the barriers," in Adrian Rilkin andBogerThomas, eds.,Udce.sofMePeople (London, 1988), and Adrian RiNin, "Cultural Movement and the ParisCommune," ArtHistory(June 1979).ConcertaCondend,LesGgës-Concerts:Histoired'undivertissement (1fî49-1914)(l'anis,1992) infers a valuableaccount of the emergence and organization of thecaléconcert.2.[ArnoldMortierl, "25mai-la revanche des phénomène,,"inLesSoireesparisiennesde1881 (Paris, 1882), 2(19-12; on Sari's experiment with Classicalmusic, see also ibid., 141-44, 193-95 (a serious review of the first Classicalconcert), and11.Gourdonde Genouillac, Paris dtraversles .siècles.5 (Paris,1882), 298 (listing thecomitéd'honneur).3. See Susanna Barrows, "Nineteenth-CenturyCotés:Arenas of EverydayLife," in