Edouard Manet, French impressionist painter, birthday 23 January 1832
Bernard Tschumi, Swiss-born French deconstructivist architect, birthday 26 January 1965
Lightbulb, patent granted to Thomas Edison, 27 January 1880
Of all the brilliance that emerged from France in the latter
part of the 19th century during the impressionism movement, perhaps
the most influential to modern art would be Edouard Manet. The manipulation and engagement of the viewer
with his paintings was revolutionary. This
action figuratively “broke through the fourth wall” and forced the viewer to
participate with the scene in front of him/her.
One of Manet’s first pieces to challenge the modern convention was Le Déjeuner sur l'Herbe. Here he took classic poses in a pastoral
setting from the works of masters of Raphael and Titian and inserted the common
university student and shockingly nude and nearly nude prostitutes. Today, similarly the work of Kehinde Wiley is
heavily influenced by this juxtaposition by placing contemporary figures in
classic heroic poses. 
Manet’s next step
to shock and engage was with his version of Olympia
who defiantly stares strait back out of the canvas. His Olympia is not a goddess but another
prostitute welcoming her next client, presumably the viewer. Needless to say, this painting made Parisian
society even more uncomfortable. 
Manet
expanded on this with Un Bar aux Folies
Bergère where in the reflection behind the barmaid you see the customer not
visible in the front. This leads one to
assume it is a reflection of the viewer and the forlorn look in her eyes a testament
to her dissatisfaction with her occupation as she hides her cleavage by a
corsage; out of the ordinary for the bar maids at the Folies. This mix of playing with the viewer and
social commentary are familiar themes today but in Manet’s time, never before
had such challenges been posed. 
When Bernard Tschumi won the commission for the design of
Parc de la Villette in Paris, France yet again sat on the forefront of a
revolutionary movement in design. This time,
it was deconstructivism and the Swiss-born Tschumi was the movement’s most preeminent
practitioners. The site was over 150
acres of slaughterhouses established by Napoléon III and thereby had an unpleasant
history. The desire to remove that image
was a perfect setting for the deconstructivist theories whereby the shape of a
building is not permanently fixed to the current activity currently housed
within. Rather, the activity within
constantly forces the reevaluation of the shape of the building. Therefore, it is a living structure and the
history of neither the building nor the historical context has no bearing on
it. A testament to the success of the
theory is that several of the follies have been renovated and repurposed to
restaurants and visitor centers, et cetera.
These programmatic pieces were not in the original plan but as the needs
of the park evolve there is no need to build new structures or compromise Tschumi’s
original concept for the follies to be reference points on a grid. With the success of the la Villette he gained
a foothold in the global architectural landscape which has led to such commissions
as the architecture school at F.I.U and the controversial Acropolis Museum in
Athens, Greece. Critics argue that this
complete disregard for the historic context for which Greece is renowned, this
new museum is harming the building itself and the surrounding contextual context
of the city. It is hard to disagree with
the critics but it is sure that in a few years’ time it will revered for its
forward thinking as the Pompidou Center.
As with most of Edison’s inventions, he did not originate the
idea, merely improve upon an existing idea and beat his competitors to the
patent office. In the case of the
lightbulb, Edison purchased the rights to an earlier version and then began
experimenting with materials and amperage.
In October of 1879 he was able to improve the vacuum tube, carbon
filament and lower electrical current to develop a bulb which lasted for an
astonishing (for that time) 13 ½ hours.
After applying for the patent, he demonstrated his achievement at his
Menlo Park laboratory by lighting it up on New Year’s Eve. 
Two years later, Edison created a market for
his lightbulb when he switched on the power at the Pearl Street Power Station
in lower Manhattan. This was the first investor
funded commercially successful electrical grid.
These achievements made his work more economically practical to bring to
the mass market thereby increasing his notoriety. And it is for his business acumen in addition
to his innovations that Thomas Edison name is more prolific than Tesla,
Westinghouse and others of equal creative caliber.
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