SPACE
Manet has often been an artist to disinterest me. It is difficult at times to relate to his bourgeoisie subjects of Paris, his befuddled scenes of action and ambiguous meaning. The space of his paintings always seem to be done on the edge of two and three dimensions. It wasn't until the theories of distorted time and space explained in the margins of his paintings within Leonard Shlains book, did I begin to understand how his point of view changes the way we see space.
I, like many who were taught physics in a public school classroom, saw the world in a vector space where objects of mass affect others with energy and are acted upon within space and time. Everything in the world can be mapped by putting it onto a grid, taking measurements, and following the laws of physics.
There is a confidence in the way our world has already been figured out; but the world I have previously believed in is rather more an illusion than reality. General Relativity, introduced about 50 years after Manet began exploring other understandings of space, reveals a truth about time and space that does not follow the same grid-like visualization of our world.
Manet seemed to be the only one in his time to realize that the space on a canvas cannot show our three-dimensional world accurately. Manet painted worlds that do not follow strict rules of "logical consistency," yet at first glance can appear normal at first, and only later gain a sense of uncanny.
Edouard Manet, Music in the Tuileries, 1862. London National Gallery.
LINE
Living in Nashville I have the lucky opportunity to view a replica of the Parthenon, downtown in Centennial Park. As I was throwing Frisbee in long arcs to my dog across the green lawn, I noticed the absence of straight lines in the great architecture of this classical recreation. Like in Manet's painting of Music in the Tuileries (1862), when viewing the columns and platform of the Parthenon each perspective constructs a space of slowly curving lines.
The way the open space of the park seems to almost compete with the form of the building, pressing in on the corners, and bulging the straight lines.
In Art and Physics, Shlain details how Manet was able to use paint to create landscapes of changing and moving space that "tacitly challenges Aristotle's logic and Euclid's space." The imaginary grid of length x height x width does not easily reveal in plain air, and Manet's paintings can show how it is the perspective of the painter that sees the straight or curved lines.
The trees in Music in the Tuileries all bow and curve, and no perpendicular forms can help to find the horizon. Even if the tree's were completely straight, it seems reasonable to someone laying underneath the tree that they would appear to bend and arc over their heads, not appear straight. Standing skyscrapers of the city also seem to curve and bend towards the viewer in the street, something we know is straight, yet is clearly seen curved.Perspective determines what we see, not the objects and space we see, a form of relativity.
There is a special way that two-dimensional artwork can propose such different ways of seeing our surroundings than what we actively see.
SPACETIME
This was contemplated by Einstein and his Special Relativity theory, which later led to the understanding of the Space-time Continuum and the fourth dimension, but as Shlain details, it was apparent in the art of Manet years before. Regarding perspective in space is difficult because we become accustom to the way we see our world. Out brain does a lot of the work identifying and recognizing the world for us so that we can more easily navigate and participate. Manet as an artist did was a scientist would do if he/she were to reflect on their own position as observer.
To regard your senses is the first step towards escaping the outdated understanding of Euclidean geometry that has been passed down through the years and reinforced by many great minds of western civilization such as Descartes and Newton. Shlain mentions Manet's painting Boats (1873) he points out how "the horizon we see appears straight, but in fact we know it is curved." Likewise, an object that appears to be curved may very well be straight, such as the edges of the Parthenon. Manet exercises this knowledge by painting the horizon as curved.
I am often still surprised at the revelations found in great paintings and architecture, and the way art's significance can sometimes go unnoticed. Art does the job of helping people question their own perspective of their world, and each artist does this in their own way. Manet is a 19th century painter who challenged art gallery standards, and this has led to much of his notoriety, but I now understand how he contributed much more to the human condition.
Leonard Shlain. Art & Physics: Parallel Visions in Space, Time and Light. New York: Harper Collins Publishing, 1991, 2007. Pg 102-108.