Customer Reviews

Alias Olympia: A Woman's Search for Manet's Notorious Model & Her Own Desire

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

My girlfriend was going to do a musical about Victorine, so she spent years researching the subject, and offered Eunice Lipton 300 pages of research for free.
Imagine our surprise to read the book's first edition and find out that she had characterized my girlfriend as someone with a drinking problem.
There was a LITTLE PROBLEM with that. My girlfriend has been a lifelong TEETOTALER and had never met Eunice!
The book fails to describe Victorine, and it never delved into her COMPETENCY as an artist. It also doesn't mention enough famous works by famous artists that Victorine modelled for, so don't stop there when it comes to research.

This book is more autobiography than the "art history mystery" I had expected, but it's an engaging story, and well worth reading. When the missing diary, or some such document, which will tell all about the real life story of Victorine Muerant fails to materialize, a fictional version is inserted in chapters. I was dissappointed by this because it gives more weight to the story Ms Lipton invented and hoped to prove, than to the facts she worked so hard to reveal. The research is tedious and discouraging, and the results will not rock the art history world. The true reward for the author is not the tidbits of information she aquires about her subject, but in her own growth both as a blossoming writer and a woman. Her finest writing is in the descriptions of the things she knows best and experiences first-hand: the great food in Paris, her past life, her present feelings, her beliefs and self-realization. It's encouraging that Ms Lipton has chosen now to be a writer, and not an art historian, and I will look forward to her next effort.

Being an avid admirer of Manet and of the paintings in which Victorine Meurent appeared, I was happy to see a book about her. Finally, I would be able to learn something of her and her life! I learned that she was a Lesbian and died in 1927 and not as a destitute alcoholic as written in some rather sketchy histories of her. but that is all I learned. The book is actually more about the author and her trying to make peace with her past and her mother than anything else. If you want to learn about Victorine, you must find another book. If you want to know about Eunice Lipton, this is the book for you. Also very few facts in the book; the author puts Victorine in some situations and conversations, but these are all imaginary. Definitely would not recommend. Author was self-indulgent and apparently not very concerned with her subject.

Lipton seems reluctant to deal with the facts she can recover. Instead, she prefers to create a fiction which is more of a projection of her own neurosis than anything which is supported by her sources. All the primary sources agree that Victorine Meurent was a destitute alcoholic for some time before she dies, but Lipton prefers to imagine her as a proto-feminist heroine. She seems so blinded by her own prejudice that she can only lash out at anyone who presents her with information which paints Victorine in less than favorable colors. For a more balanced view of the same material, find a copy of Otto Freiderich's Olympia: Manet and the Paris of his Times.

Very entertaining book. A mystery explored. Interesting blend of art history and detection. I read the book with no particular expectations. I think the people who did not like the book perhaps had too many preconceived ideas about the book and were disappointed when they did not find what they expected. I am not a professional in the field. just enjoyed a good read.

'Well, I'm a redhead now, and people are saying, "You know, you look like Victorine."
'Perhaps I do.'

Oh please. Elsewhere Lipton slips into the 'voice' of the model Victorine Meurant and seems to allege that she was an undiscovered or overlooked genius -- this in a time when such female artists as Suzanne Valadon, Mary Cassatt and Berthe Morisot achieved reasonable, lasting success.
But most of the book is autobiography, telling Lipton's side of her first divorce or how she was unjustly fired from Hunter College, and so on.
It's dreadful.

As an art lover and as I writer, the author's style of blending fact with conjecture was very well done. I thoroughly enjoyed the book.

Alias Olympia is a personal biography of Eunice Lipton's search for Victorine Meurent, the woman who modled for Manet's Olympia. Not only does this book inspire one to go out and look for the truth they believe in their heart to be true, but it also provides hope for those who believe that one person can still make a difference. Lipton's journey through history provides a longing yet frustrating ride through a world geared souly for men. By the end of this book I was in love and I wanted to spit at the same time. It is motivating; a look at the purpose of our lives and how we may be fulfilled. With this book in hand I feel like I could set out and discover anything I set my mind to.