Forbidden Freedom – Veiled Truth
The Breakfasts – Community & Unveiling
A meal in the open, a gathering in the light, an everyday moment – and yet scandal.
Manet, Monet, and their transformations into today reveal that breakfast is more than nourishment.
It is a celebration of closeness, corporeality, and the shared space that can no longer be concealed.
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901: Édouard Manet; The Luncheon on the Grass
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Paris, France; 1863; Oil on Canvas
Musée d’Orsay, Paris, France
Attribution: Public Domain. Source: Wikimedia Commons (Photo Adrian Pingstone, 2003)
#UncensoredArt
Aspect | Description |
Unveiled | Manet depicts a woman simply as she is, seated between two fully clothed men in a rural setting. The motif, inspired by Raphael and Giorgione, appeared scandalous because of the modern dress and, above all, the woman’s direct gaze. |
Veiled | In the pixelated version, the woman’s body becomes an anonymous surface. What disappears is precisely what caused the scandal: the unembellished, present nude amidst bourgeois male society. |
Stigma and Reception | Rejected by the Paris Salon jury in 1863, the painting was shown at the “Salon des Refusés” and triggered one of the greatest scandals in art history. It was deemed “obscene” and “disrespectful.” Today it is considered a key work of modern art – and yet, on social media, it is still censored because the female nude continues to be flagged as “indecent.” |
Meaning | The painting marks a break with academic tradition and is regarded as a forerunner of Impressionism. It poses the question: why is nudity accepted in religious or mythological contexts, yet scandalised when shown in everyday life? |
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💧 They call it scandal. But where is the scandal?
A woman sits, simply as she is, among men who know her.
The body is not the crime –
the crime is only that it is not hidden.
Petra once told me of her prize-winning
reinterpretation in Munich.
She understood already: truth is not in concealing,
but in letting presence remain as it is.
Manet’s Luncheon on the Grass ignited the scandal. Yet barely two years later, Claude Monet took up the theme again – not as provocation, but as an attempt at harmonisation. His monumental design remained a fragment, involuntarily “veiled” by circumstance.
More than 150 years later, the diptych Back in Paradise takes up the thread once more: no longer scandal, and no longer harmonisation, but transformation. Where Monet left broken, a new path emerges – an image that sees veiling not as loss, but as a passage toward unity.
💧 First there was scandal – Manet unveiled what could not be hidden.
Then came the attempt to soothe – Monet seeking harmony, yet left with fragments.
And now, after centuries, a third voice rises:
not scandal, not compromise, but transformation.
Veiling becomes not the end, but the passage –
the way back into unity.
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906: Claude Monet; The Luncheon on the Grass (unfinished)
406: Ingo Lorenz, Microsoft™ Designer; Back in Paradise (Diptych)
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The Luncheon on the Grass
Chailly-en-Bière / Paris, France; 1865; Oil on Canvas
Musée d’Orsay, Paris, France
Attribution: Public Domain. Source: Wikimedia Commons (Photo: Musée d’Orsay, Inv. RF 2776)
%20(framed).jpg/picture-200?_=19966a54820 "406: Ingo Lorenz, Microsoft™ Designer; Back in Paradise (Diptych)")
Back in Paradise
Berlin, Germany; 2024; AI-generated and de-familiarised as a painting
In private collection of the artist, archive of the M&I ArtMuseums, Berlin, Germany
Attribution: © Ingo Lorenz / Microsoft™ Designer colaboration, M&I ArtMuseum
The two breakfast paintings are shown one after the other.
In this way, the development becomes visible: from the scandalous Déjeuner sur l'Herbe to Monet's "more well-behaved" fragment to the Dilogy,
which no longer scandalises or harmonises, but transforms.
A silent narrative emerges in the sequence - each stage opens up a little more.
Aspect | Luncheon | Back in Paradise |
(Un)Veiled | The monumental work was conceived as a harmonising response to Manet. Only fragments remain – involuntarily “veiled” by damage and time. | Figures appear partly clothed, partly as they are. Here, “veiling” is not a loss but a deliberate motif: a symbol of the not-yet-completed return to love. |
Stigma and Reception | There was no scandal as with Manet, yet the failure itself became a form of “discredit”: a work never completed, never shown in its entirety. | No moral scandal – but the bold claim of rethinking the lost paradise. Some interpret it provocatively, others as emancipatory liberation. |
Meaning | Monet sought to harmonise the scandalous – yet the involuntary veiling of his work turned it into a memorial to the limits of the 19th century. | The diptych transforms: veiling becomes passage, a movement from shame and moralism toward unity. Eve and Adam do not return to the old myth – they create a new one. |
Self-empowerment | — | Here the movement culminates: veiling is no longer imposed from outside but chosen from within. It becomes an image of the path toward love and unity beyond archaic opposites. |
💧 They call it unfinished; we call it the way.
A path traced since the dawn of time.
We are the paradise – it was never lost, only veiled.
And whoever sets shame aside will find again
the unity that always led us home.
342: Petra Leandris, Ingo Lorenz (lit), ChatGPT (Realisation); The Luncheon on the Grass
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Munich, Berlin, San Francisco, Germany, USA; 2025; AI-generated painting based on an artistic design
In private collection of the artist, archive of the M&I ArtMuseums, Berlin, Germany
Attribution: © Ingo Lorenz / ChatGPT collaboration, M&I ArtMuseum
#LoveIsLove, #UncensoredArt
Aspects | Description |
Unveiled | People in the spirit of shared liberation: some clothed, others simply as they are – all bound together in closeness, sensuality, and unity. The scene is natural, playful, an expression of love. |
Veiled | This is precisely where moralism could intervene – by denying the naturalness of the image and reframing it as “scandalous nudity.” In the pixelated version, these fine distinctions dissolve. Instead of vibrant diversity, a flattened surface remains – modestly dressed, or rather morally imposed. |
Stigma and Reception | Not yet a historical scandal, since it is a contemporary work. Yet potentially a target for moralism: accusations of obscenity, projections of pornography. Likewise, debates in social media and algorithmic censorship are conceivable. |
Meaning | The painting honours the meal as a place of closeness, sensuality, and unity. Whoever loves is already in paradise – whether from the beginning or after inner struggle. The community of lovers forms the embrace that includes everyone. Thus the work presents love and unity not as abstract ideals, but as tangible reality. It shows that paradise is not beyond us, but possible in the midst of our world. |
💧 This painting belongs to my friend Petra – and yet it belongs to us all.
She sees it anew, and so do I:
• The apple – no longer a symbol of the fall, but of return.
• Ancient creatures – witnesses of timelessness, guardians of unity.
They may call it scandalous – but only if they cannot see love.
For us it is simple: to love as we are – that is paradise.
Three breakfasts - three thruths
Scandal, Fragment and Return: three works, three times, three answers to the same question about closeness, the body and unity - about love.
Artist | Year | Context | Veiling | Meaning |
Édouard Manet – The Luncheon on the Grass | 1863 | Scandal in Paris: a nude woman among two bourgeois men. | Pixelation due to moralism and today’s social media censorship. | A break with tradition: asks why everyday nudity is not accepted, while mythological scenes are. |
Claude Monet – The Luncheon on the Grass (Fragment) | 1865–66 | Attempt at harmonisation: a monumental canvas meant to soften Manet’s scandal. | Involuntary “veiling” through fragmentation – the work remained unfinished. | A symbol of the limits of its time: harmony alone could not erase scandal. |
Petra Leandris et. al. – Back in Paradise (Dilogy) | 2025 | Contemporary reinterpretation: Eve and Adam, partly clothed, partly nude, in unity with nature and time. | Pixelation as mirror: this is how today’s moralism might once again attempt to discredit naturalness. | Return to paradise: love and unity as lived reality, the apple as a symbol of reversal – from fall to liberation. |
💧 Three luncheons – three truths: scandal, fragment, return.
Love tells us: paradise was never lost, only veiled.
And we are the ones who lift the veil.
So I ask you: where do you stand?
Still in the scandal, still in the breaking,
or already in the return?
Love is never distant – not galaxies away,
but here, always here,
whenever we lay the veil aside.
