'In the Loge'
In the Loge, 1878
Oil on canvas, w66.04 cm x h81.28 cm (26" x 32")
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA USA
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Going to keep focusing on the idea of a work's audience, but switching it over to some of the more concrete ways this plays out — specifically, where an artist places the viewer relative to the subject. (And I promise, it sounds dry, but this can be a surprisingly huge source of visual humor and drama for both artists and you the viewer.)
Above is the piece I was taught on, so that's what you get. This would be In the Loge by Mary Cassatt (who we've touched on briefly before), and the museum's blurb about the piece cuts to the chase nicely so here's an excerpt of that for you:
So, in the painting above, arguable visual cues that position the viewer:
What makes this painting especially nice is that all of these effects work well together, but are also all in service of a larger theme of looking. And that's pretty crucial, because while it's a normal for the artist to have to consider where the viewer is for every piece (and what relationship that sets up between the viewer and a given work), it's not usual to see the viewer-placement-cues made as obvious as they are here. That's because it's dangerous to do so; make the viewer 'part' of the scene too strongly, and it can feel very gimmicky, a cheap illusion that works once and then doesn't serve a purpose.
But let's run through what Cassatt set up: 'we' (the collective viewer) are seated near this lady at the theater. (And it's an at-the-time-contemporary theater, that many of her viewers would have recognized or frequented themselves, or recognized via similar theaters.) We catch the man across the way looking in our direction (!), and we may feel a momentary sense of violation of privacy. But actually he appears to be looking at the lady, which by the logic of a moment prior might be a violation of her privacy...but if it is, well, we are also looking at her. And then again both he and she, by bringing themselves well-dressed to a public place known for people showing off to each other, have likely joined an implicit agreement that they have come to 'watch' a show in order to be 'watched' as part of a different show entirely. Does this lady in fact know this man is watching her, perhaps studiously looking away in order to let him? (Maybe not, but it's the type of thing the vast majority of people do at some point or other, so we have to consider the option.) And as the viewers of an artwork, we have shown up solely to look at these people, so what does that make us?
The parade of viewership becomes part of a larger question of how people relate to each other in contemporary society, tying in questions of what purpose art serves as a mirror to ourselves existing in our own time. In this painting, has everything become a show, and what part of this is 'authentic' underneath all the performance, or is the performance itself all we have to judge? How are different thoughts created by a painting of this scene, versus the thoughts/impressions we'd get actually standing in such a moment?
And this is how positioning the viewer has the power to completely determine the 'meaning' of an artwork. Force a viewer closer, further, part of the scene or not, and you've created paths for the viewer to travel down in their experience of your work...mmm, mental manipulation.
Some more examples of this, from the subtle to the extreme, throughout the week.
Above is the piece I was taught on, so that's what you get. This would be In the Loge by Mary Cassatt (who we've touched on briefly before), and the museum's blurb about the piece cuts to the chase nicely so here's an excerpt of that for you:
The canvas, then entitled 'At the Français—A Sketch', depicts a fashionable lady dressed for an afternoon performance at the Comedie Français, a theater in Paris. Entertainments like the theater, the opera, and the racetrack were extremely popular among Parisians, who enjoyed such diversions not only for the show, but also for the opportunity to see—and to be seen by—their peers. The Impressionists took delight in painting these spectacles of modern life, and the theater, with its dazzling variety of lights and reflections, was an especially appealing subject. Many male artists, including Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Degas, had painted beautiful women in theater boxes, where they appeared as if they were on display in a gilded frame. Cassatt gave her female figure a noticeably more dynamic role, for she peers avidly through her opera glasses at the row of seats across from her. In the background at upper left, a man trains his gaze upon her. The viewer, who sees them both, completes the circle. Cassatt’s painting explores the very act of looking, breaking down the traditional boundaries between the observer and the observed, the audience and the performer.Now, I have no idea how this whole 'blurred line between observer/observed' thing could possibly have relevance in the age of social media and digital identity, but we'll push on and pretend that it does.
So, in the painting above, arguable visual cues that position the viewer:
- A place the viewer could feasibly be and would recognize, in this case a contemporary theater box. As opposed to a view looking down from floating in the air, or set in a place like the inside of a furnace, this location lets the viewer easily imagine themselves at the scene.
- Eyelines/lines of sight. The perspective on this painting (looking at the curve of the balcony rail) is a little strange, but serves to bring our eye first to the woman and then swing us around to the man in the distance: our line of sight to both of them, combined with the man's directional gaze at the woman, produces a soft triangle that locks us into these figures as the main focal points, and makes our 'participation' in the scene crucial to this triangle.
- Size and cropping of foreground figure, to give us the impression we're sitting right beside her.
- The loose (literally Impressionistic) handling of the paint, with only the woman's face and hand better in focus and a little extra contrast thrown around the man with the opera glass (note that Cassatt threw a dark line on top of the railing under him, the only place she's done so). This makes the picture seem more like the blurred visual intake of an actual human eye, where we are looking at the woman but have our eye caught perhaps by the man's movement. [For contrast, imagine if everything was rendered with more realism all the way to the back wall. It would be harder to feel like you were there viewing things in a particular moment — at best, you'd be present at the scene, but as a god-like being with freeze-frame omniscience, which would admittedly be a neat thing but not the same.]
- At a guess, probably the size of the canvas. I haven't seen this work in person, so I couldn't verify, but I've found 20x30" a pretty good size to paint life-size torsos, and adding up the effects of a slightly taller canvas here + figure pushed in a little further and seated, as if viewer was nearby with a polite amount of distance (+ perhaps smaller people back in the day), this may work out to about life size.
What makes this painting especially nice is that all of these effects work well together, but are also all in service of a larger theme of looking. And that's pretty crucial, because while it's a normal for the artist to have to consider where the viewer is for every piece (and what relationship that sets up between the viewer and a given work), it's not usual to see the viewer-placement-cues made as obvious as they are here. That's because it's dangerous to do so; make the viewer 'part' of the scene too strongly, and it can feel very gimmicky, a cheap illusion that works once and then doesn't serve a purpose.
But let's run through what Cassatt set up: 'we' (the collective viewer) are seated near this lady at the theater. (And it's an at-the-time-contemporary theater, that many of her viewers would have recognized or frequented themselves, or recognized via similar theaters.) We catch the man across the way looking in our direction (!), and we may feel a momentary sense of violation of privacy. But actually he appears to be looking at the lady, which by the logic of a moment prior might be a violation of her privacy...but if it is, well, we are also looking at her. And then again both he and she, by bringing themselves well-dressed to a public place known for people showing off to each other, have likely joined an implicit agreement that they have come to 'watch' a show in order to be 'watched' as part of a different show entirely. Does this lady in fact know this man is watching her, perhaps studiously looking away in order to let him? (Maybe not, but it's the type of thing the vast majority of people do at some point or other, so we have to consider the option.) And as the viewers of an artwork, we have shown up solely to look at these people, so what does that make us?
The parade of viewership becomes part of a larger question of how people relate to each other in contemporary society, tying in questions of what purpose art serves as a mirror to ourselves existing in our own time. In this painting, has everything become a show, and what part of this is 'authentic' underneath all the performance, or is the performance itself all we have to judge? How are different thoughts created by a painting of this scene, versus the thoughts/impressions we'd get actually standing in such a moment?
And this is how positioning the viewer has the power to completely determine the 'meaning' of an artwork. Force a viewer closer, further, part of the scene or not, and you've created paths for the viewer to travel down in their experience of your work...mmm, mental manipulation.
Some more examples of this, from the subtle to the extreme, throughout the week.