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Mary Cassatt: Modern Woman
October 13, 1998 - January 10, 1999

The Art Institute of Chicago
Regenstein Hall, The Daniel F. and Ada L. Rice Building

For years, American critics and art-world enthusiasts have included Mary Cassatt as an American painter. Today, after a decade or so of eschewing American Impressionist painters, these same critics and art-world enthusiasts are attempting to not only make amends but possibly bridge to an American focus by reappropriating Mary Cassatt into the realm of American artists.

The problem is that Mary Cassatt is not an American artist. She is an artist who began studies here in the U.S. and finished learning and refining her style and subject in Europe. Mary Cassatt even moved to Europe and made Paris her home for the remainder of her life. Despite personal and some professional ties to the American art scene of her day, her inspiration and subject, attitudes and styles came from European ideals and movements.

This exhibit of Mary Cassatt's work is hardly a retrospective, as the Art Institute would like to claim it to be. It's much too small to be a retrospective. However, it is a very good introduction to Mary Cassatt, and almost, of the Impressionists altogether. Mary Cassatt began with the same schooling as the Impressionists, became disgusted with the mannerism of the French Salon artists, and began following the styles of Degas, Monet, Pissaro and Morisot. Her subject matter is similar to Caillebotte, choosing middle-class family scenes and society. She also dabbled with Japanese print styles. Japanese prints were making their way to Europe and artists collected and sought to reproduce the styles and artistic ideals behind them; Van Gogh and Monet, among other Impressionists, also found Japanese prints exciting sources of inspiration.

Because she followed these conventions of the time, there is nothing terribly surprising abour Mary Cassatt's work, much less this "retrospective," with one exception: her paintings involving children.

The exhibit at the Art Institute is broken into seven galleries focusing on different aspects of Mary Cassatt's styles, themes, and growth. Compared to her total oeuvre, each gallery contains only a handful of paintings or prints. The show starts out humbly and remains uninspiring until one reaches Gallery Four, which focuses on "Mary Cassatt and the Child." Here, you start to get a feel that something is unusual about her chosen subject of "child." It doesn't become clear until you get to Gallery Seven which focuses on "Mother and Child." (Between Galleries Four and Seven you are sidetracked by the amazing Japanese style prints and the superfluous Chicago Expo Mural.)

It is her paintings of children, and mothers and children, that reveal the genius behind the brush. Forget everything else you see in this exhibit (except the Japanese-style prints, which I will get to shortly). Cassatt's paintings of children are like no others found in her time or before. In these paintings, Mary Cassatt chooses to present the child in a completely unidealized fashion. The children are the focus of these paintings, not their surroundings, nor the adults also in the paintings. The child figures are lumps of flesh and bone, as unproportional as real children are. Their hands are tiny, their bodies and faces puffy, underdeveloped, and they have the candid expressions on their faces real children have -- as if they are in their own fantasy worlds, oblivious to the adults around them. Mary truly captures the spirit of the children and childhood in each and every one of these paintings. There is no pretense that these are just very young adults, as other painters of her day would paint them or as many baby-boomers would view their children today. I can't imagine Mary Cassatt would have ever asked one of these children their opinion about anything.

The adults in these paintings are aloof, backdrop items to the children. Sometimes their focus is on the child. Sometimes their focus is something outside of the painting that the viewer doesn't see. In any case, the focus of subject is squarely on the child, and the purpose of the adult in the painting is to offer a physical support to hold the child up. Only the child engages the viewer of the painting in whatever capacity the child is able to give.

As they show the paintings, the exhibit quotes from Mary Cassatt's personal writings that state she believed one of woman's purpose in life was to rear and raise the next generation. But it's difficult to believe this was the sole purpose behind these paintings, as the focus is not on motherhood and child-rearing. To try to argue that the mother is just as important in the painting is a waste of time. There is little in these paintings to differentiate between the adults, while the children are definitely individual and unique. Mary Cassatt did not have any children herself, so she could not possibly identify with motherhood in such a way as to make that the subject of these paintings, either. Where many women artists focus on issues and subjects of womb, motherhood, children, and nurturing, one doesn't get that out of Mary Cassatt's work. And that is what makes Mary Cassatt important and refreshing today.

Separately, Mary Cassatt's Japanese-style prints carry the same types of subject and handling of subject, but here, Mary is attempting to emulate the Japanese printing styles. Out of a strange serendipity, her work here does not duplicate the Japanese style, but develops a new print style with much more depth and volume to the subject. Her figures don't appear two-dimensional despite the attention to line. Faces have shading and volume as do women's dresses and other elements in the pictures. The orthogonal perspective of the Japanese print is missing and replaced with a standard perspective.

These prints are so strong that most viewers and non-artists will probably enjoy these prints more than the paintings -- mostly because they are unprecedented in style. The paintings don't appear different from any other European impressionist, but these prints are certainly a new and an interesting look at one of the obsessions of artists of the 1800's. The Institute places the Cassatt prints only in one half the gallery-room space. Real Japanese prints grace the other side of the room, which annoys; one or two examples of what Mary was trying to copy would suffice. Some prints Mary appears to copy outright in their subject matter. These prints could have been shown side-by-side with their Japanese counterparts, which would have been helpful when the show is crowded with viewers and it's difficult to go from one side of the room to the other for a comparison.

The show in general is a great introduction to impressionist art. It's a wonderful showing of Mary Cassatt's work, it teaches the visitor a great deal about the prevailing styles, and shows how one artist developed and interpreted the fashions of the day. It's not a true retrospective, however, and too little is focused on what makes Mary Cassatt important. One will surely enjoy this show, but may come away feeling like there isn't anything spectacular about Cassatt. This is a failing of presentation, not necessarily of the work. Quickly browse the first couple of galleries; then proceed to the last few galleries for the real meat of the show.

--Richard Donagrandi