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JOHN DE ANDREA
(American, born 1941)

Manet: Déjeuner sur l’Herbe, 1982
Polyvinyl polychromed in oil
Gift of the New Collectors Group of 1982 with additional funds
from AtlanticRichfield Foundation, the Alliance of the J.B. Speed Art
Museum, and Friends 1983.8

For centuries artists have reinterpreted the work of earlier artists. Manet: Déjeuner sur l’Herbe is American sculptor John De Andrea’s interpretation of the famous painting, Déjeuner sur l’Herbe (Luncheon on the Grass), 1863, by Édouard Manet, now in the Orsay Museum in Paris, France.

John De Andrea adds several interesting twists to his interpretation of Manet’s painting. He uses black-and-white tones for the sculpture, rather than the lifelike colors of the Manet, in part because he first became familiar with Manet’s painting through a black-and-white photograph. His use of grayish tones is also an intentional device to distance his work from reality and to make the viewer see it as a work of art. Manet used as models his brother Eugène, the Dutch sculptor Ferdinand Leenhoff, and a favorite model, Victorine Meurent. De Andrea has created portraits of himself (in the dark T-shirt) and of his studio assistant. In this he follows an age-old tradition of artists incorporating self-portraits in their work. Here, in sharp contrast to the well-dressed figures in Manet’s painting, the men wear paint-spattered work clothes, which suggests that they are in a studio accompanied by a nude model.