xxx/ellauri137.html on line 194: When Manet painted this piece 1868, scenes of bourgeois life were in vogue. Yet The Balcony went against the conventions of the day. All the subjects were close acquaintances of the artist, especially Berthe Morisot who here, pictured sitting in the foreground, makes her first appearance in Manet's work, and who went on to become one of his favourite models.
xxx/ellauri137.html on line 196: At its presentation at the 1869 Salon, this enigmatic group portrait was overwhelmingly misunderstood despite the obvious reference to Majas at the Balcony of Francisco Goya. "Close the shutters!" was the sarcastic reaction of the caricaturist Cham while another critic attacked "this gross art" and Manet who "lowered himself to the point of being in competition with the painters of the building trade".
xxx/ellauri137.html on line 204: Majas on a Balcony 1800-1810 is one of the many genre paintings by Goya portraying scenes from contemporary life. The physical setting is an azotea or balcony, a characteristic appendage of Spanish houses and an integral part of social life and character in the towns and cities of Goya's country. The features and props of the setting are confined to an iron railing with vertical grills, a very austere structure (compared to the rich elaborate grill-work of which we are accustomed to think as flourishing in Spain, or at least in New Orleans), which alludes to the socio-economic character of the house; the edge of the floor; some chairs - rather inelegant - one of which has cheap wicker matting; and in the background, a bare wall, a only proof of whose presence is a shadow to the extreme right suggesting a material surface.
xxx/ellauri137.html on line 206: And the Majas, they are not aristocratic ladies as their fine apparel may suggest; they lack refinement and dignity, though they are extremely attractive (particularly the one on the right, I would fuck her anytime). The artist calls them majas not mujeres. A patent wink to the same artist's best known work La Maja desnuda from the same year. They are no ordinary women. They are courtesans! Sluts, not to make too fine a point on it. Goya makes a subtle criticism on the society of his time. In Majas on a Balcony, Goya combines an ironic treatment of material with an impressionistic technique, a mode of presentation, which succeeds in creating a piece of social criticism. Buaahahahaha don't make me laugh!
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The Balcony

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The Balcony

xxx/ellauri137.html on line 412: — George Dillon, Flowers of Evil (NY: Harper and Brothers, 1936)
The Balcony

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The Balcony

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The Balcony

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The Balcony

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