Accepting Defeat

Édouard Manet’s “The Dead Toreador”, circa 1860s

A great painting, in my opinion, is one that contains these three traits; it needs to be visually pleasing, be it color, composition, subject matter, and/or scale; It must be conceptually relevant, and it must have been created for the sole purpose of saying fuck you.  

While browsing through my crumbling bookshelf of thrifted/gifted art books, I came across a Manet painting I’ve never seen before. I am no means an expert on French impressionism, so maybe that's why I never seen this painting, but it seems underrated to me (but what do I know). The “Dead Toreador”, painted by Édouard Manet around 1864, is a painting that is packed with conceptual greatness.  

If you know your art history, you know about the infamous ‘Salons’ held in France. If you don’t know your art history, all you need to know is that Salons were juried group shows that were elitist and not easy to get into, which pissed off and challenged many artists. Because of its difficult jury, some of the most important work in art history has come out of artists submitting work to Salons, mostly out of anger.

The Dead Toreador was a product of Manet’s struggle with the Salon of 1864. Inspired by Spanish painters and themes, Manet painted a tragedy at a bullfight. The painting was savagely critiqued for its composition, unrealistic space, and unfit proportions; one critic conveyed the bullfighter was killed by “a horned rat”, not a bull. Pissed off, and possibly agreeing with the critics, Manet cut the canvas into two pieces. The dead toreador at the foreground was removed, and both sides reworked. The outcome of the reworkings silenced the savage critics. While the Incident at a Bullfight was the main piece, the Dead Toreador is the diamond of the two. The Dead Toreador was kept for conceptual purposes. It embodied the symbolism of turning a defeat into a victory. The critics killed him- He could have thrown out the foreground, fixed the main scene and called it a day, but Manet was determined to embrace death. He reworked the section that was ridiculed the most, and made it exceptional. Manet said ‘fuck the haters’ (while simultaneously being thankful to them).  

Reconstruction by Susan Grace Galassi and Ann Hoenigswald of Manet's Incident in a Bullfight (1862-64),

We could talk about the composition, the technique of the painting, the isolation of the corpse in this dark, silent setting, but what is supporting all of this is the strive to except defeat, highlight it, and to rework yourself to be better without hiding the fact you lost. This concept can be an influence on how you handle your art career, or life (cliché I know).

V.N