Who Shall be the Nude Woman? Meditations on Lasagna and Edouard Manet

There is a group of Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts alumni who have reconnected through Facebook. Recently, we have begun to meet occasionally offline. A little while back, we met for dinner at the studio of an artist named Dick Ranck. Dick's wife Brooke cooked up a batch of incredibly delicious lasagna, and there was more than enough alcohol for those of us who still haven't managed to quit drinking. One of our friends, the painter Fred Danziger, could not be with us that night, but on May 6th, he wrote to us on Facebook: " Whoever attends, I implore you to reconstruct the Manet painting with live models and post for our group." He was referring, of course, to the legendary party painting, Dejeuner sur l'Herbe or Luncheon on the Grass that caused a sensation when he exhibited it in the Salon des Refuses in Paris in 1863.