Resumen de Sur/face. Manet malt Mlle E.G.
This article presents a new interpretation of Manet's picture of Eva Gonzalès in the act of painting. The basis for this is the identification of the picture on the easel of Eva Gonzalès and of a second "icon" of the rococo, to which Manet refers in his panel. In a broader perspective it is argued that this painting, produced for the "Salon" of 1870, has special significance not only in regard to Manet's trasition from quoting from the Museum of the Old Masters to "a faux-Impressionist mode" (as Carol Armstrong describes Manet's late painting), but also in regard to the bigger topic of metaphorzing painting as "makeup", which turns out to be downright programmatic. The term "makeup" for painting is a metaphor that pervades thinking about the possibilities and conditions of painting since early modern times. It is throught this term that the status of painting between the poles of surface and illusion has been paradigmatically reflected and negotiated. Based on the example of this one programmatic picture, the article faces the broader question of how Manet -in referring to the female practice of makeup, the consumer culture of modern Paris, and the commodity fetishism of the rococo -has reinterpreted painting as such.
