(piano music)
Voiceover: Paris in the second half of the
19th century had become a modern city.
It was a place with spectacle.
It was place where the newly wealthy would
show themselves off and would also
be interested in seeing what other people
were wearing.
And there's no place that that's more clear
than in the opera house.
Voiceover: And the opera house was really
the center piece of this new modern Paris
that was begun during the Second Empire
in the 1850's and 60's.
And it was and is still an amazingly lavish place.
It's got gold and mosaics and paintings
and mirrors and broad, beautiful staircases
and balconies.
It's a fabulous space.
Voiceover: And artists including Degas
and Mary Cassat would often paint there.
But the opera house is a complicated place.
Of course there was the stage, but so much
of that building was given over to the
public display of the audience before
the performance, after the performance, and
during the intermission.
Voiceover: So the social spaces where people
could see and be seen were a critical part
of the opera house.
Voiceover: And that's the subject of an important
painting by Mary Cassatt called, "In the Loge."
Voiceover: And although there are several
paintings by Mary Cassatt of this subject
and paintings by other artists like Renoir
of figures in the Loge in the boxes in the
opera house, none of those paintings reveal
a subject so engaged in looking.
Voiceover: Let's just set the scene for a moment.
Most likely this is intermission.
The great chandelier has come down from the ceiling
and has illuminated the audience and now
she is taking the opportunity, not to look
at the stage, but to look across at somebody else.
Voiceover: And she is being looked at by
someone else that we see.
So in a way she's sandwiched between two gazes.
Our gaze and the male figure that we see behind her.
Voiceover: Well that's so interesting because
the male figure who's got his own opera glasses
and is peering at her reminds us that we are
just as much a voyeur looking at her as he is.
The painting itself is just beautifully handled.
It's so loose and it's so brave in so many ways.
Let's put this in context.
Mary Cassatt is one of the impressionists.
She was invited by Degas into one of the
impressionist exhibitions.
He admired her work and she is extraordinarily
advanced, but she's found here, in the opera,
one of the few places where she can really
partake as a woman in the activity of looking
and being seen, which was so central to the work
of the impressionists.
Voiceover: And so central to modern life in Paris.
When we think about the advanced painting
of this moment, of Monet and Manet and Degas
and Renoir, we know that they're painting
dance halls and cafes and bars and the social
spaces of the city and the streets of the city.
The grand boulevards of the new Paris
because a woman, Mary Cassatt, couldn't be
free in those spaces in the same way
as her male colleagues.
But as you said, the opera was a place that she
could and did attend.
And it made sense, as a woman artist wanting
to paint the modern world, for her to paint
the space that was really socially
accessible to her.
Voiceover: And then she's placing, as the
protagonist, a woman who has real agency.
This woman is in the process of looking
as the male gazer is, as well, and there's this
reveling between the male gaze and the
female gaze.
They both have the opera glasses.
And just look at the woman in the foreground.
She's leaning forward, her head is forward.
There's a real enthusiasm within her body
to take in the scene.
Voiceover: And she leans her elbow on the edge
of the box just the like male figure does
behind her, who's looking at her.
Her fan is held in an upright way in her lap
in a way that almost seems kind of phallic.
There's something very strong and present
about her.
Voiceover: It reminds me of some of the drawings
and paintings that Degas did of opera glasses.
And so there is this interesting tension
about the power of a woman and her gaze.
Voiceover: And also a sort of a aspect
of technology here in the way that visual
technology was enhancing the world that we
could see and ways that we could see it.
Voiceover: So this is a painting that's very
much about this culture of looking.
And, of course, we are active participants in it.
Voiceover: And Mary Cassatt is choosing
a modern subject, but also this modern
way of handling it, this sense of capturing
the fleeting moment that was so important
to these artists and finding a new
visual language to do that.
(piano music)