Selling, Seduction, and Soliciting the Eye: Manet's Bar at the Folies-Bergère

Manet's painting solicits the eye with a luscious "still life" of commodities for sale on the counter next to an attractive saleswoman. Depiciting a crowd in the mirror-the modern public of men and some women whose gazes are being solicited-the painting is related to the discourses of mass consumption, the development of department stores, and the expanded visual culture of illustrations and advertising posters during the second half of the nineteenth century.