Bar at the Folies-Bergere

This is the last painting Edouard Manet finished before he died. It is considered his most enigmatic masterpiece. A google search of "Manet's 'Bar at the Folies-Bergere'" will take you on an interesting journey. I recreated the scene in a diorama, and want to show how it went together.

Suzon is the name of the woman in the painting. I use 1/6" scale figures in my dioramas (Barbie, Ken, G.I. Joe, and so on), so I selected a non-smiling Barbie, pretty much like the one on the left. Since Suzon doesn't look too much like Barbie, I had to make some major changes.

That Barbie hair had to go! I pulled it out by the roots.

Her neck was too long. I didn't want to do it, but I had to remove a section of her neck and re-glue her head back on.

Barbie's lags were unnaturally long. Lucky Suzon's legs were hidden behind the bar, but she needed to be shorter. The next step was "chop!" from mid-calf down.

Then I used paper clay to make her face more like that of Suzon, as shown in th photo on the right.

I dressed her up.



I arranged the diorama.



I would love feedback.