GAZES, MIRRORS, AND GENDERED POSITIONS IN THE LOGE PAINTINGS OF MARY CASSATT
GAZES, MIRRORS, AND GENDERED POSITIONS IN THE LOGE PAINTINGS OF MARY CASSATT

Summary/Abstract: "One area of research within contemporary feminist art criticism has been the (male) gaze and its power in spectatorship. This paper examines the web of gazes present in a selection of loge paintings by a 19th-century Parisian Impressionist painter, the Americanborn Mary S. Cassatt (1844-1926), and argues that through various devices, such as the mirror, (1) her paintings disrupt traditional dynamics of gazing; and instead (2) reflect a new hierarchy of gazes, in which (3) leisured women are also positioned as gazers. The paper proposes that Cassatt’s structuring of gazes reflected, and ultimately confirmed, the new bourgeois gendered social landscape and did not intend to disrupt or subvert it, as is frequently claimed. "[...]

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