Edouard Manet
A Bar at the Folies-Bergère
1882
oil on canvas
96 x 130 cm
I can’t remember when I first saw ‘A Bar
at the Folies Bergere’ by Edouard Manet but it’s the painting that always comes
to mind when I think of the things that make me most excited about looking at
paintings and making them myself. Manet’s work in general, and this painting in
particular does so many things at once. It tells us about the illusionistic
space of painting and its own materiality, but also about the world beyond the
picture place, making a social comment on the time in which it was made. The
positioning of the figures and their reflections make it a spatial conundrum
that can never be solved, yet its language of realism makes it utterly
believable as a moment in time; a universally recognisable exchange between two
people.
The paintings I love looking at the most
are both an oblique mirror on the world we live in, and something much more
subjective and personal. It’s that space between the familiar and the unknowable
that makes me come back to this painting again and again and what keeps me
painting.
Caroline Walker, 2016
Caroline Walker
Indoor
Outdoor
2015
oil on linen
200 x 160 cm
Caroline Walker
A
Woman at Her Mirror
2015
oil on board
55 x 45 cm
Caroline Walker (UK)
Quarters
2015
oil on linen
168 x 126 cm
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