French Nineteenth-Century Art Writing as Audio Description: the case of Edouard Manet

This chapter compares the ‘traditional’ audio description of Edouard Manet’s 1863 masterpiece Olympia with descriptions of the painting by 19th-century French critics made when it was first put on public display in Paris in 1865. This comparison suggests that descriptions that include references to artistic techniques, personal opinion, and the various ways a beholder looks at and responds to a work of art produce a more engaging and evocative audio description than the supposedly objective and neutral texts that are recommended by best practice guides. By embracing the plurality of responses to a painting, and acknowledging that different people view paintings in different ways, this chapter advocates for a more creative approach to audio description that might better capture the experience of being moved by a work of art.