From Manet's painting – Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe – two women and two men slip from the timelessness of the museum into our present day. They have come to picnic and enjoy a pleasant swim in the river. The men approach them and, with little attempt to conceal their aggressive libidinous intentions, threaten the happiness of the moment, the serenity of the place, and the integrity of the bathers. This fragment of Eden and everything around it is inhabited by a naturalized social violence...
