Édouard Manet, A Bar at the Folies-Bergere

Manet’s A Bar at the Folies-Bergère addresses the complex theme of gender and class relations in modern urban life. In the late nineteenth century, the café-concert was frequented by avant-garde artists such as Degas, Seurat, and Manet. The Folies-Bergère was one of the largest of these café-concerts in Paris, offering circuses, musicals, and vaudeville acts. Note the legs of a trapeze artist who is part of the spectacle to the upper left.

Reflected in the mirror are members of the elegant crowd who have come to the performances at the Folies-Bergère. The men are dressed in top hats and the women in rich costumes. Through their opera glasses they observe lazily the many glittering spectacles performed for their benefit as the electric light dances off the crystal chandelier behind the young girl’s head. On the marble bar-top Manet has spread a glorious still life of liquor bottles, tangerines, and flowers to entice the customer.

Manet presents the Folies-Bergère as a place where the enjoyments of alcohol, the circus and vaudeville, and even sexual transactions take place. The weary girl stands at the bar, barely differentiated from her background, like one of so many glittering objects on display, to be consumed both visually and sexually. The barmaid looks out of the painting at us as if we are her next customer, but she stands stiffly and formally, neither acknowledging nor smiling at us; her sleeves are rolled up and she seems weary from her work. On the other hand, she seems to lean forward to engage in conversation with the top-hatted client in her mirror reflection, suggesting Manet’s intention to create an ambiguous narrative.^[1]