Focus on this artwork and explain the Cultural references.
The 1934 ballet Bar aux Folies-Bergère with choreography by Ninette de Valois and music of Chabrier was created from, and based around, Manet's painting. The 1947 film The Private Affairs of Bel Ami faithfully references A Bar at the Folies-Bergère twenty nine minutes into the film with a look-alike actress, set and props as the main characters enter the establishment.
The painting was the inspiration of a song (possibly by Sydney Carter) in the popular theatre production The Lyric Revue, in London in 1951. The refrain went "Oh, how I long to be Back in my dear Brittany ... But fate has chosen me For the bar at the Folies-Bergères".
The painting The Bar (1954) by Australian artist John Brack, which depicts a comparatively grim and austere Melbourne bar-room scene, is an ironic reference to A Bar at the Folies-Bergère.In the 1988 Eddie Murphy film Coming To America, a spoof on the painting in which the barmaids are dark-skinned women in red dresses and there is a hamburger on a plate on the counter, can be seen hanging at the McDowell residence.Canadian artist Jeff Wall makes reference to A Bar at the Folies-Bergère in his work Picture for Women (1979). The Tate Modern wall text for Picture for Women, from the 2005–2006 exhibition Jeff Wall Photographs 1978–2004, outlines the influence of Manet's painting:In Manet's painting, a barmaid gazes out of frame, observed by a shadowy male figure. The whole scene appears to be reflected in the mirror behind the bar, creating a complex web of viewpoints. Wall borrows the internal structure of the painting, and motifs such as the light bulbs that give it spatial depth. The figures are similarly reflected in a mirror, and the woman has the absorbed gaze and posture of Manet's barmaid, while the man is the artist himself. Though issues of the male gaze, particularly the power relationship between male artist and female model, and the viewer's role as onlooker, are implicit in Manet's painting, Wall updates the theme by positioning the camera at the centre of the work, so that it captures the act of making the image (the scene reflected in the mirror) and, at the same time, looks straight out at us.
“Adventure in Paris”, a book in the popular British Oxford Reading Tree scheme for children, clearly references the painting in a scene where the children travel back to 19th century Paris to enquire as to the whereabouts of the Eiffel Tower.
Ninette de Valois Jeff Wall Tate Modern Melbourne Chabrier Coming To America Sydney Carter The Bar Bar aux Folies-Bergère John Brack Picture for Women London The Private Affairs of Bel Ami