Manet and the Multiple

摘要

Vision is at the center. Eyeglasses are in the middle of Edouard Manet's oil-on-canvas portrait of Emile Zola, painted in February and March of 1868. Through one lens we see almost nothing: abstract black that Manet dares us to recognize as the frock coat of his subject. Through the other lens, we see something quite different: instead of flat black, striated white and grey; instead of abstraction, an illusion of the edges of pages on which words and a picture seem to be printed.