The First of the Moderns

The role played by certain artists in the history of art can seem disproportionate, and disappointment follows. All that fuss about this7. From Cubism to Malevich's Suprematist icon, Black Square on a White Background, countless artistic movements were born of Cezanne's corpus, but Cezanne himself was once described as a "mediocre painter of apples". Manet is just such an artist. He is not one of the greatest painters, but, like Giorgione and Caravaggio, he marks a turning point in the history of art; with him, one world ended and another began. Degas, the most intelligent painter of Manet's time, understood this, observing, as he left the little cemetery in Passy where Manet had been laid to rest, "He was greater than we thought". For the great adventure of modern painting, freed of anecdote and false conventions, begins with Manet. Matisse said of him: "He was the first to act on reflex and thus simplify the painter's business ... expressing only what directly touched h is senses". The pretext mattered less than the painting. Indeed, a century later, Manet might have been a non-figurative painter; unlike Rembrandt and Delacroix, he rejected psychology, and had no time for secrets of the heart or soul. He was criticised, says Hippolyte Babon, "for seeing the external world only in swathes or dashes of colour, as though he were permanently dazzled".