[1][2] The central figure stands before a mirror, although critics—accusing Manet of ignorance of perspective and alleging various impossibilities in the painting—have debated this point since the earliest reviews were published.

"[7] Other notable details include the pair of green feet in the upper left-hand corner, which belong to a trapeze artist who is performing above the restaurant's patrons.

[8] The 1934 ballet Bar aux Folies-Bergère with choreography by Ninette de Valois and music of Chabrier was created from, and based around, Manet's painting.

The painting was the inspiration of a song (possibly by Sydney Carter) in the popular theatre production The Lyric Revue, in London in 1951.

[10] In the 1988 Eddie Murphy film Coming to America, a spoof on the painting in which the barmaids are dark-skinned women in red dresses and there is a hamburger on a plate on the counter can be seen hanging at the McDowell residence.

[11] Canadian artist Jeff Wall makes reference to A Bar at the Folies-Bergère in his work Picture for Women (1979).

The figures are similarly reflected in a mirror, and the woman has the absorbed gaze and posture of Manet's barmaid, while the man is the artist himself.

Though issues of the male gaze, particularly the power relationship between male artist and female model, and the viewer's role as onlooker, are implicit in Manet's painting, Wall updates the theme by positioning the camera at the centre of the work, so that it captures the act of making the image (the scene reflected in the mirror) and, at the same time, looks straight out at us.