Édouard Manet's Ham and Suzanne's lost body in Edgar Degas's salon1. Issue 3 (January 2017)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Kessler, Marni Reva
• Is Part Of: Contemporary French civilization. Volume 42:Issue 3/4(2017)
• Page Start: 279
• Page End: 300
• Publication Date: 2017-01
• Subjects: French language -- Foreign countries -- Periodicals; Civilization, Modern -- French influences -- Periodicals; France -- Civilization -- Periodicals; France -- Social life and customs -- Periodicals; 306.094405
• DOI: 10.3828/cfc.2017.18
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0147-9156

Abstract

Abstract : In the background of an 1895 photograph, which was staged and taken by Edgar Degas in the salon of his apartment, the artist sits in profile; on the wall behind him hang Édouard Manet's 1874 chromolithograph Polichinelle and c.1875–1880 painting Ham and a fragment of Degas's 1868 oil portrait of Manet and his wife. Cut soon after its execution by Manet and angrily reclaimed by Degas with the intention of "restoring" it, the damaged canvas that appears in the photograph contains a reclining Manet and only the back wedge of Suzanne. But in Degas's clever wall vignette and the photograph he made of it, Manet's sliced ham seems to replace Suzanne's missing body, the meat's robust pink flesh and thick seam of fat now a stand in for her flesh. That artists at the time would have studied internal human anatomy during their training further supports my claim, not only that Manet's ham resembles contemporary medical cross-sections and is inherently corporeal, but also that Degas could – and did – envision it as a substitute for Suzanne's body. Rooting my analysis in the contention that representations of food may be uniquely suggestive and resonate far beyond what their seemingly quotidian subject matter might initially seem to proffer, I show that Degas uses the medium of photography to cook up a narrative in which a slab of ham surprisingly restores a wounded body and a ruined painting.