MUSEUMS AND EXHIBITIONS REVIEWS  

From the Desk of Isabella Duncan and Solange Berthier

 

Photo: Masked ball at the opera.

Manet disturbs the order of what hangs here, but does so in an incredibly moving way. We may amuse ourselves comparing how Manet painted shoes or cloaks with how his forebears did so (there's not much difference), or how Manet's Philosopher (Beggar with Oysters), standing beside a pile of oyster shells, is the cousin of one of those Velázquez full-length beggar-philosophers - Menippus and Aesop - whose full-length portraits he seems to be looking at across the gallery, and which seem to be aware of him. Never talk to me again about installations. The whole gallery has become a kind of tableau, a meditation on time and presence, on the things painters deal with even when they don't know it. The figures in Manet's The Balcony (one of whom is the beautiful Berthe Morisot), derived from Goya, are looking out not, as we habitually and quite naturally imagine, on to the street below, but somewhere else. Down this long room of paintings, certainly, and toward all those who will come to look at them, though what they're thinking doesn't bear speculation. They are painted and can have no thoughts. The fierce, cartoonish little dog on the balcony, half hidden by a skirt and which I had never noticed before, appears surprised by something. Us, maybe. His own existence, certainly. It occurs to me that the dogs in this room know more than we do.