Edouard Manets Olympia Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Edouard Manets Olympia - Essay Example However, young Edouard rebelled against the will of his father, who wanted for him to become a lawyer. He went to follow his passion of studying painting at the Louvre, and abroad in Holland and Italy.1 His work, constantly refused by the establishment, received the support of his close friend Baudelaire and was inspired by Velazquez, Rembrandt and Titian. Manet painted a wide variety of subjects (seascapes, still lifes, portraits, as well as urban, religious and historical scenes) and his most famous paintings are Musique aux Tuileries, Djeuner sur l'Herbe, Le Fifre, Un Bar aux Folies-Bergres and of course, Olympia. Supported by Emile Zola, he also painted his portrait in 1866.2 When he died in his early 50s, the Impressionists were making art that insisted it was of the moment - a train steaming out of a station, rain on the boulevard, Manet's art is at the forefront of this discovery of contemporary life during their time.3 To this day, numerous artists had begun to challenge the stale conventions of the Academy when Manet's Olympia was accepted for the Salon in 1865. Never had a work caused such scandal. Critics advised pregnant women to avoid the picture, and it was relegated to thwart vandals. She is not a remote goddess but emphatically in the present, easily recognized among the demimonde of prostitutes and dancehalls.4 Viewers were not used to the painting's flat space and shallow volumes. To many, Manet's "color patches" appeared unfinished. Even more shocking was the frank honesty of his courtesan: it was her boldness, not her nudity, that offended. Her languid pose copied a Titian Venus, but Manet did not cloak her with mythology. In Olympia's steady gaze there is no apology for sensuality and, for uncomfortable viewers, no escaping her "reality".5 Anthony Julius agrees with that premise of "escaping reality." In his book, Shock and art Transgressions: The Offenses of Arts (2001), he deems that such art succeeds by alienating people, exposing our prejudices, sabotaging our habits. So Manet's Olympia, a naked prostitute in a classic pose, stares back at us, unmasking the centuries of male dominance and voyeurism disguised as an interest in the artistic nude of myth and history. He claims that the purpose of the painter, which is to convey his artistry is concealed by the shock value and diminishes its semblance of value as an art. In Heschel's analysis of Geiger's study of the "Jewish Jesus" (1988), she draws an analogy to Manet's Olympia, whose direct stare at her audience discomforted a world used to the demure artistic portrayal of women and concluded that it was "unchristian" and making it less of a scholarly gaze. Geiger's Jewish study of Jesus unsettled the Christian, or at the very least culturally Christian, academic world. According to Heschel, by reversing the situation in which Christians, especially the biblical critics of the age, wrote about Judaism to one where Jews wrote about Christianity, Geiger made a major adjustment to the power relations between the two religions. Where Christian theologians excoriated Pharisees and Pharisaism, Geiger argued purposely that Jesus was a Pharisee par excellence; the ideal that Jesus preached so

Global Financial Crisis Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Global Financial Crisis - Essay Example Investments Banks in United States received a huge blow of the financial crisis for which they gradually disappeared from the financial scenario of the country (Kenc & Dibooglu, 2010, p. 3). The crisis of the mortgage market during 2007 rendered a huge impact on countering a decline in the value of the market price of large securities and other financial instruments held by the financial organizations of the world. Credit Crunch which happened in the American markets created a global turmoil by declining the value of debt instruments all over the world by restricting credit both on personalized and on organized levels. Thus the contagious effect of the financial credit crunch of America took the form of global financial crisis by ripping off the stability of the financial institutions on an international scale (Longstaff, 2010, p.436; Aronson, 2010, p. 276). Reasons for the Global Financial Crisis The main reason which is attributed to causing the event of global financial crisis in the global scenario is the effect of contagion. Contagion effect has been identified to generate similar shocks of financial breakdown in one economic system to other financial systems operating throughout the world mainly through three ways. In the first manner the potency of economic breakdown in one financial market is spread to other world economies through the information network. This information obtained can hugely affect the working of the economic system of the other countries largely jeopardizing them. Secondly the event of contagion also gains ground by disturbing the liquidity position of the financial assets of the other global economies. A strike imposed on the availability of financial liquidity through the system of credit in one economy also renders potential impact by curbing the amount of liquidity in other economies of the world. In the third case the contagious effect of the financial crisis in any developed region like America also weakens the desire and potenc y of other economies to enhance the risk portfolio in their financial system (Longstaff, 2010, p.438). Along with the above reasons there were several other causes like the selfish outlook of the micro factors of the financial system like the groups of investors, creditors, banks and other financial institutions. These economic groups were busy considering avenues to get the best of the financial system by drifting the financial and economic policies of the government in their favor. The impacts rendered by these systems led to the growth of credit generation in the economy of United States until it led to the final demise. Further the social policy outlines taken by the government of United States to help render huge credits to the poor people of the country to construct houses also led to the happening of the credit crunch. Huge amount of credit ushered in the economy with low amount of interest also led the banks to gain the advantage of such. The financial system of granting cre dit in America was managed by different agencies that used to set policies and regulations detrimental to the economic system of the country. These agencies were themselves not successful in rightly satisfying the responsibilities entrusted on them and mainly wanted to avail the favor of the intricacies of the government regulations pertaining to credit (Wignall & Atkinson, 2009, pp. 2, 5, 8; McNally, 2009, p. 36, 38). The opening up of the economic s