
The Dawn of Modernism
48" x 60"
1985
Collection of Tony Silver
Manet painted four versions of his journalistic Execution of Maximilian. The killing of the Austrian archduke shook the conscience of France. It stirred Manet to make a work sometimes confused with his hero Goya's famous Fifth of May execution scene. After Manet's death, his son committed another atrocity, cutting out and selling a section of the painting on which my work is based. In my reassembly, Manet's Fifer replaces Maximilian and his two generals. Over-familiar to artists through reproductions as one of the early icons of Modernism ("I'm glad they finally got the little bastard," said one, on seeing this), the Fifer here represents Modernism's final moments, before its succession by Postmodernism, soon to be laid to rest in its turn.
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