A break with the times

In Manet, Georges Bataille focuses on the life and work of Édouard Manet, undoubtedly one of the greatest painters in the Western world and considered by some to be the founder of modern art. Bataille's text, which opens with a chronology of detailed biographical and historical information, was originally published with some black-and-white reproductions in 1955 by Albert Skira Editions and now appears in volume 9 of his Œuvres complètes after Lascaux ou la naissance de l'art. The juxtaposition of Manet with this piece on the birth of art is not without significance, as Bataille examines the artist's extraordinary status at the dawn of a new era. The richness and variety of Manet's canvases have been studied in depth in a multitude of publications over the years, including by eminent authors such as Zola, Baudelaire, Mallarmé, Valéry, Malraux, T.J. Clark and recently Vitoux, to name only a few of his critics. Identifying as one of the great discontinuities in the episteme of Western culture the one which marks the threshold of modernity at the beginning of the nineteenth century, Foucault reminds us also that Manet is credited with changing modes of representation and techniques in art; that this painter of the nineteenth century brought about a major break, for example through the use of colour and light, making possible not just Impressionism but also no doubt movements well beyond it.