Edouard Manet caused quite a sensation in 1863 when his controversial work, Dejeuner sur l’herbe, was initially rejected by the Paris Salon. Due to particularly harsh judging that year, a show was organized for the rejects and this piece was met with a fierce reaction, most of it hostile, for to many it violated established rules of painting according to the history painting hierarchies which decided which paintings were acceptable based on moral or heroic messages and subject matter.

In his work, the viewer is met with a buck naked female in a picnic setting with two fully-dressed men, with a lightly-clothed bather in the background. The overall composition is seemingly borrowed from Titian/Giorgione’s The Pastoral Concert, perhaps also Giorgione’s The Tempest. It’s a debated question of who is in conversation, the men apparently not engaging either female, who similarly are not engaging them, either. There are also issues with perspective and scale with no sense of depth or space between the figures as well as the surrounding trees.

So, I am attracted to Manet’s work yet wanted to radically change, well, everything. The players are mostly circus performers, I removed the men, applied a different narrative and the setting is more spatially abstracted - yet I kept the level of engagement between the players as disconnected. The one, humbly-dressed non-circus performer is attempting to engage, offering hope, sisterhood and fertility but is ignored by the others, thus highlighting the idea of rebirth and resurrection superficially rejected.