<< 1 >>
Rating: 
Summary: Praise for Alias Olympia:
Review: "In the end, and much to the reader's delight, Ms. Lipton has done what she set out to do: rescue Victorine Meurent from history. It is a marvelous recovery."--New York Times Book Review"The most original art book to emerge from my feminist art generation."--Lucy R. Lippard, Women's Review of Books "A rare alchemy . . . a melding of art history and autobiography."--Village Voice "Beautifully written . . . compelling."--Diane Wood Middlebrook, author of Anne Sexton: A Biography Eunice Lipton was a fledging art historian when she first became intrigued by Victorine Meurent, the nineteenth-century model who appeared in Edouard Manet's most famous paintings, only to vanish from history in a haze of degrading hearsay. But had this bold and spirited beauty really descended into prostitution, drunkenness, and early death--or did her life, hidden from history, take a different course altogether? Eunice Lipton's search for the answer combines the suspense of a detective story with the revelatory power of art, peeling off layers of lies to reveal startling truths about Victorine Meurent--and about Lipton herself.
Rating:
Summary: Praise for previous editions of Alias Olympia:
Review: ALIAS OLYMPIA In this wonderfully digressive blend of art history and autobiography, Eunice Lipton chronicles her search for Victor-me Meurent, the model for two of Edouard Manet's most famous paintings, "Olympia" and "Dejeuner sur l'Herbe." Ms. Lipton, an art historian and the author of books on Degas and Picasso, writes that she became interested in Meurent because the French model was "unlike other naked women in paintings.... This was a woman who could say 'yes,' or she could say 'no.'" With a persistence that kept her shuttling back and forth between New York and Paris, Ms. Lipton discovered that Meurent lived some 35 years longer than had been previously documented, that she was a member of the presti-gious Societe des Artistes Francais who exhibited her own work, and that she preferred the company of women. Along the way, the author is confronted by some of her own demons and desires; only her attempts to write in Meurent's voice truly distract the reader. In the end, and much to the reader's delight, Ms. Lipton has done what she set out to do: rescue Victorine Meurent from history. It is a marvelous recovery. --Robin Lippincott, New York Times Book Review, March 7, 1993 IN SEARCH OF OLYMPIA For every one art lover who knows her name, thousands can instantly recognise the face and body of Victorine Meurent. She was the bold model with the tight little frame and steady, daring gaze whose depiction in Manet's Olympia and Le Dejeuner sur l'Herbe revolutionised European nude painting and outraged the 19th century art world. Contemporaries called Meurent "a female gorilla" and marched through the Salon with sticks and umbrellas to attack her portrait. Now she is something of a feminist heroine, the plucky naked girl who stares out of the canvas defying male expectations of submission, the star of a sexy fete champetre who refuses her part in the erotic script. Who was the woman behind the image? Alias Olympia is subtitled "a woman's search for Manet's notorious model and her own desire", and began as Eunice Lipton's attempt to find out. Lipton is a distinguished art historian, but she soon discovered that history had buried Meurent as a typical model - prostitute, alcoholic, loser - nicknamed "the Shrimp". Meurent is known to have painted as well as modelled, but records, documents and interest in her were negligible. There seemed no book to be written. But Meurent became for Lipton an obsession, and scholarly research a detective trail of blazing personal urgency. With wit and perception, Lipton describes how she lived, breathed and dreamt Meurent, how lacklustre archivists and Parisian alleys drove her to paranoia, how she came to see the Parisian model born a hundred years before her as an alter ego who shared her own problems with family, lovers, feminism and the art establishment. Biography merges into autobiography, art history into a novel as she creates her own idealised Meurent: a defiant lesbian artist who whizzes about Paris, sells her paintings, drinks alone in bars, does her own thing. The result is a clever, unorthodox, enthralling book which combines criticism and fiction in elegant symbiosis. Lipton's overarching theme is the century-old treatment of women as objects in art and culture, and the way this continues to condition how women see themselves. Here Meurent is the breakthrough. "resisting centuries of admonition to ingratiate herself". consigned to (patriarchal) historical oblivion as punishment. Manet, who after all created the radical image, gets no credit. But you do not have to agree with Lipton to enjoy her story. Her format allows a plethora of juicy digressions - sharp words on the pampered, male-bonded lives of Berthe Morisot and Mary Cassatt, for example. snap into an analysis of why Renoir and Manet and Monet endlessly depicted one other painting, but never drew the women artists working. Lipton has inspired hunches, admissions of uncertain assumptions or dead-end routes which a narrower scholarly work would lose. Most dazzling is her confidence to turn the tables on herself and unearth research that shows how pathetically an ageing, down-and-out Meurent traded on the Manet connection: a final joke in which Meu-rent refuses to play her author's game as trenchantly as she declined to satisfy the 19th century viewer. Alias Olympia joins a small, impressive genre of post-modern criticism: Richard Holmes' Footsteps, Cecily Mackworth's offbeat account of Freud in Lucy's Nose last year- where the academic search is the story, where loose ends are not tied up and uncertainties are accepted and bring life to the narrative. It is cultural history at once learned, pro-vocative, original and unstuffy. --Jackie Wulisclulager, London Financial Times, 3/13/93
Rating: 
Summary: A book that makes you want to give up and start living!
Review: Alias Olympia is a personal biography of Eunice Lipton's search for Victorine Meurent, the woman who modled for Manet's Olympia. Not only does this book inspire one to go out and look for the truth they believe in their heart to be true, but it also provides hope for those who believe that one person can still make a difference. Lipton's journey through history provides a longing yet frustrating ride through a world geared souly for men. By the end of this book I was in love and I wanted to spit at the same time. It is motivating; a look at the purpose of our lives and how we may be fulfilled. With this book in hand I feel like I could set out and discover anything I set my mind to.
Rating: 
Summary: Very Disappointing
Review: Being an avid admirer of Manet and of the paintings in which Victorine Meurent appeared, I was happy to see a book about her. Finally, I would be able to learn something of her and her life! I learned that she was a Lesbian and died in 1927 and not as a destitute alcoholic as written in some rather sketchy histories of her. but that is all I learned. The book is actually more about the author and her trying to make peace with her past and her mother than anything else. If you want to learn about Victorine, you must find another book. If you want to know about Eunice Lipton, this is the book for you. Also very few facts in the book; the author puts Victorine in some situations and conversations, but these are all imaginary. Definitely would not recommend. Author was self-indulgent and apparently not very concerned with her subject.
Rating:
Summary: Very Disappointing
Review: Being an avid admirer of Manet and of the paintings in which Victorine Meurent appeared, I was happy to see a book about her. Finally, I would be able to learn something of her and her life! I learned that she was a Lesbian and died in 1927 and not as a destitute alcoholic as written in some rather sketchy histories of her. but that is all I learned. The book is actually more about the author and her trying to make peace with her past and her mother than anything else. If you want to learn about Victorine, you must find another book. If you want to know about Eunice Lipton, this is the book for you. Also very few facts in the book; the author puts Victorine in some situations and conversations, but these are all imaginary. Definitely would not recommend. Author was self-indulgent and apparently not very concerned with her subject.
Rating:
Summary: Dissapointing
Review: Lipton seems reluctant to deal with the facts she can recover. Instead, she prefers to create a fiction which is more of a projection of her own neurosis than anything which is supported by her sources. All the primary sources agree that Victorine Meurent was a destitute alcoholic for some time before she dies, but Lipton prefers to imagine her as a proto-feminist heroine. She seems so blinded by her own prejudice that she can only lash out at anyone who presents her with information which paints Victorine in less than favorable colors. For a more balanced view of the same material, find a copy of Otto Freiderich's Olympia: Manet and the Paris of his Times.
Rating: 
Summary: An inspiring story with a reward at the end.
Review: This book is more autobiography than the "art history mystery" I had expected, but it's an engaging story, and well worth reading. When the missing diary, or some such document, which will tell all about the real life story of Victorine Muerant fails to materialize, a fictional version is inserted in chapters. I was dissappointed by this because it gives more weight to the story Ms Lipton invented and hoped to prove, than to the facts she worked so hard to reveal. The research is tedious and discouraging, and the results will not rock the art history world. The true reward for the author is not the tidbits of information she aquires about her subject, but in her own growth both as a blossoming writer and a woman. Her finest writing is in the descriptions of the things she knows best and experiences first-hand: the great food in Paris, her past life, her present feelings, her beliefs and self-realization. It's encouraging that Ms Lipton has chosen now to be a writer, and not an art historian, and I will look forward to her next effort.
Rating:
Summary: Dissapointing
Review: This book is more autobiography than the "art history mystery" I had expected, but it's an engaging story, and well worth reading. When the missing diary, or some such document, which will tell all about the real life story of Victorine Muerant fails to materialize, a fictional version is inserted in chapters. I was dissappointed by this because it gives more weight to the story Ms Lipton invented and hoped to prove, than to the facts she worked so hard to reveal. The research is tedious and discouraging, and the results will not rock the art history world. The true reward for the author is not the tidbits of information she aquires about her subject, but in her own growth both as a blossoming writer and a woman. Her finest writing is in the descriptions of the things she knows best and experiences first-hand: the great food in Paris, her past life, her present feelings, her beliefs and self-realization. It's encouraging that Ms Lipton has chosen now to be a writer, and not an art historian, and I will look forward to her next effort.
Rating:
Summary: An inspiring story with a reward at the end.
Review: This book is more autobiography than the "art history mystery" I had expected, but it's an engaging story, and well worth reading. When the missing diary, or some such document, which will tell all about the real life story of Victorine Muerant fails to materialize, a fictional version is inserted in chapters. I was dissappointed by this because it gives more weight to the story Ms Lipton invented and hoped to prove, than to the facts she worked so hard to reveal. The research is tedious and discouraging, and the results will not rock the art history world. The true reward for the author is not the tidbits of information she aquires about her subject, but in her own growth both as a blossoming writer and a woman. Her finest writing is in the descriptions of the things she knows best and experiences first-hand: the great food in Paris, her past life, her present feelings, her beliefs and self-realization. It's encouraging that Ms Lipton has chosen now to be a writer, and not an art historian, and I will look forward to her next effort.
<< 1 >>
|
