Art historian Henry M. Sayre traces the origins of the term "value" in
art criticism, revealing the politics that define Manet's art.
How did art critics come to speak of light and dark as, respectively,
"high in value" and "low in value"? Henry M. Sayre traces the origin of
this usage to one of art history's most famous and racially charged
paintings, Édouard Manet's Olympia.
Art critics once described light and dark in painting in terms of
musical metaphor--higher and lower tones, notes, and scales. Sayre shows
that it was Émile Zola who introduced the new "law of values" in an 1867
essay on Manet. Unpacking the intricate contexts of Zola's essay and of
several related paintings by Manet, Sayre argues that Zola's usage of
value was intentionally double coded--an economic metaphor for the
political economy of slavery. In Manet's painting, Olympia and her maid
represent objects of exchange, a commentary on the French Empire's
complicity in the ongoing slave trade in the Americas.
Expertly researched and argued, this bold study reveals the
extraordinary weight of history and politics that Manet's painting
bears. Locating the presence of slavery at modernism's roots, Value in
Art is a surprising and necessary intervention in our understanding of
art history.
