Luncheons on the Grass

Thirty-five contemporary artists create their own version of Le Dejeuner sur l'herbe.

Edouard Manet's Le Dejeuner sur l'herbe (1863) is generally cited as the first modern painting. The entry slide in art history lectures about modernism, the work remains among the "most audacious painting[s] ever seen in France," as Ross King described it in The Judgement of Paris (2006).

As Manet did with Le Dejeuner sur l'herbe, the most provocative painters today collapse the historical and the contemporary onto one plane. Jeffrey Deitch invited a group of these influential artists to create their own versions, combined here with historical responses to Manet's painting. The slim volume features these often biting and satirical works alongside essays discussing Le Dejeuner sur l'herbe's enduring influence on contemporary figurative painting.