Olympia (Manet)
Modern art historian Nathaniel Harris writes, "...Olympia was an erotic shock ... Manet presented a young woman with erotic modern trappings ... that served to emphasize her nakedness ... To add to the puzzlement of the ordinary man, Olympia's gaze was not in the least inviting, or provocative, or even enigmatic ... it was simply neutral ... [N]eutrality ... was one more affront to the 19th-century male, whose picture-women were supposed to yield, to comply ... Here the girl is cool and confident, and it is the setting and properties that suggest sexualityperhaps a commercialized sexuality that is none too reassuring to the male ego."