The Quietus - A new rock music and pop culture website

Art

Power & Pain, Love & Madness: Brett Anderson Curates The Collections of Art UK
The Quietus , May 16th, 2020 09:06

The Suede frontman curates a selection of ten paintings from the UK's public collections, in a virtual exhibition prepared exclusively for the Quietus

Edouard_manet___execution_of_emperor_maximilian_1589476940_resize_460x400

Edouard Manet – Execution of Emperor Maximilian
Manet is my favourite painter so I had to include some of his work although to be honest most of my best loved pieces of his are housed in Paris. For me he manages to capture the human form with such supreme eloquence and once interestingly developed a technique of painting on a background of black which often makes his work sing in a way that’s different from his contemporaries. Regardless of Manet’s elegant draughtsmanship I was always fascinated by this painting simply because it was so damaged. Although the way in which it’s presented was probably never intended by the artist it somehow lends the work a danger and modern resonance that otherwise it might not possess. The story of its mutilation is easy to uncover by going to Wikipedia but the jaggedness that it lends the painting somehow imbues it with an extra sense of violence perfectly in keeping with its dark and bloody story.