Lou Posner: The Interface Between Life and Art
Pour Manet grew out of a visit to Grounds For Sculpture in New Jersey, where Posner encountered SewardJohnson’s three-dimensional interpretation of Édouard Manet’s Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe (Luncheon on the Grass). Seeing the sculpture allowed Posner something Manet’s painting could not: a view of the figures from behind.
The possibility immediately caught his imagination. Posner removed the two male figures entirely and focused on the nude woman, using a live model for his own figure. As he explained, removing the men changed the possible stories the viewer can invent. Familiar elements of the picnic remain—the basket, fruit, bread, bottle and discarded clothing—but without the men, their meaning and the woman’s circumstances are left to the viewer.