{"id":821,"date":"2015-10-15T21:59:24","date_gmt":"2015-10-15T21:59:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/courses.candelalearning.com\/zelixart102\/?post_type=chapter&p=821"},"modified":"2015-10-29T18:30:42","modified_gmt":"2015-10-29T18:30:42","slug":"cassatt-in-the-loge","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/atd-herkimer-arthistory2\/chapter\/cassatt-in-the-loge\/","title":{"raw":"Cassatt, In the Loge","rendered":"Cassatt, In the Loge"},"content":{"raw":"Dr. Beth Harris and Dr. Steven Zucker provide a description, historical perspective, and analysis of Mary Cassatt's\u00a0In the Loge<\/i>.\r\n\r\nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/HVuyK_vIMfc\r\n\r\nMary Cassatt, In the Loge<\/i>, 1878, oil on canvas, 81.28 \u00d7 66.04 cm (32 \u00d7 26 inches), (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston).\r\n
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External Link<\/h3>\r\nView this painting up close in the Google Art Project.<\/a>\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n

At the Opera<\/h2>\r\nIn nineteenth century France, the gaze of the observer\u2014whether on Napoleon's grand new boulevards or in the opera\u2014was very much structured by issues of economic status. Mary Cassatt's remarkable painting In the Loge<\/i> (c. 1878\u201379) clearly shows the complex relationship between the gaze, public spectacle, gender, and class privilege.\r\n\r\nCassatt was a wealthy American artist who had adopted the style of the Impressionists while living in Paris. Here she depicts a fashionable upper-class woman in a box seat at the Paris opera (as it happens, the sitter is Cassatt's sister, Lydia). Lydia is shown holding opera glasses up to her eyes; but instead of tilting them down, as she would if she were watching the performance below, her gaze is level. She peers straight across the chamber perhaps at another member of the audience. Look closely and you will notice that, in turn, and in one of the boxes across the room, a gentleman is gazing at her. Lydia is then, in a sense, caught between his gaze and ours even as she spies another.","rendered":"

Dr. Beth Harris and Dr. Steven Zucker provide a description, historical perspective, and analysis of Mary Cassatt’s\u00a0In the Loge<\/i>.<\/p>\n