Foucault's 1971 Tunis Lecture on Manet Published in English as 'Manet and the Object of Painting'

Michel Foucault's 1971 lecture in Tunis, analyzing Édouard Manet's role in founding modern painting, has been translated into English as 'Manet and the Object of Painting'. Foucault argued that Manet invented the 'painting-object', a concept with three dimensions: treatment of space, light, and the viewer's place. This broke from the classical regime established by Masaccio, which relied on linear perspective, single light sources, and fixed viewpoints. Manet's works like 'Music in the Tuileries', 'The Execution of Maximilian', 'Saint-Lazare Station', 'Luncheon on the Grass', 'Olympia', and 'A Bar at the Folies-Bergère' exemplify this shift through shallow depth, multiple light sources, and viewer mobility. Foucault described Manet's approach as 'vicious, malicious, and cruel', creating 'enchantment and malaise'. The lecture, originally part of an unwritten 1967 book project, contrasts with later thinkers: Richard Wollheim saw the material object enabling modern psychology, while Foucault denied psychology in modern art. Foucault's analysis aligns roughly with T.J. Clark's view of Manet's incoherence but attributes it to structural negation of classical elements. The volume, published by Tate Publishing in 2010, includes an introduction by Nicolas Bourriaud and translation by Matthew Barr. Foucault's later genealogical method might have yielded a different account, but this lecture remains a key artifact of his early art theory.