From One Painting…to Another

Director: George Schwizgebel

Switzerland/France, 2023

3 minutes

Two paintings that relate to each other, or the representation of a woman of color in the 19th and 20th centuries.’

Olympia (1863) by Edouard Manet is a painting in which we see a naked woman staring confidently at the viewer and behind her a black maid holding a bouquet of flowers no doubt offered by an admirer.

In reference to Olympia, Félix Vallotton painted La Blanche et la Noire (1913) which shows a young naked white woman, and next to her a dressed black woman,provably her partner, who is smoking a cigarette.