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Hard as nails and cold as cash. She looks self assured and confrontational: a prostitute selling a service. But there's a vulnerability about her too. I like the way it's based on a Titian painting, almost parodying it. Manet shows us a woman who stares back in such a way that makes me think if she could speak she'd call out, "Got a good eyefull have yer? What are you looking at, eh? Haven't you seen a naked woman before?" Despite the nudity and the trappings of sexuality it's her hard, brittle stare that makes this picture. (Try imagining her with a soppy smile on her face, it changes everything.)
I always think this picture changed something forever. It questions the relationship between art and pornography, women and prostitution. It looks back to Titian and leads on to such works as Tracy Emin's "My bed".
PS Victorine, the model, was not a prostitute, but a successful artist in her own right.
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