(piano music) Voiceover: So, here we are looking
at La Loge, which is a painting by Pierre Auguste Renoir in the
Courtauld Galleries in London and it's from 1874, which is the magical
year of the beginning of the Impressionist Exhibitions, which actually they
just started out as paintings that weren't accepted at the official
yearly exposition of paintings, and then all the Impressionists said, "Well, if you're not going to accept
our paintings we'll start our own show," and that was the year, 1874. Voiceover: Yeah, they were
desperate for some recognition. Voiceover: They needed
someone to look at them. Voiceover: Yeah. This was a time
when they were no real galleries for contemporary art and
they wanted people to see it. Voiceover: Interestingly enough,
though we may not think of it this way this would have been shocking at
the time, the way this was painted. Voiceover: Oh it's
incredibly loosely painted. Voiceover: Very much so, and
it's this scene of modern life. It's not a classical story, or
a religious story or anything. It's two people out at the theater as
you would go to the theater in the 1870s. Voiceover: I guess the loge was a level of
the theater just like it is today. Right? Voiceover: They were kind
of in like an opera box, and this is very much
what people would do. You'd sit in the loge and the woman
always sat in front by the railing, and you can see she has her right arm
resting on this cushioned railing. Then the man would sit behind
her and look at other people. Voiceover: Right. Voiceover: He's not looking
down toward a stage at all. Voiceover: No, he's looking around
to see who else is at the theater. Voiceover: Exactly. Voiceover: And who they're with. Voiceover: It was a very gossipy society. I suppose it's not that different
from our celebrity tabloids obsession. You know who's out with
who and who's wearing what. Voiceover: It's like the whole painting
though is really this pyramid shape of black and white stripes
formed by her dress. What a great dress. Voiceover: I know. The thing that always impresses
me about this painting is that it is very loosely
painted, but you get a lot of
detail of what she's wearing and her pearls and her corsage and her
earrings and the flowers in her hair. He manages to get that all in
there without giving you exact
detailed contours of everything. Voiceover: So, she's
really upper class, right? I mean this is an expensive
dress, it looks to me. Voiceover: It was an expensive dress,
but she's probably not his wife. The women who wore the most ostentatious
dresses were actually sort of these upper class courtesans who would
be trotted out on the arm of their patrons which is probably who
this man is in the background. The woman who posed for this was
actually a fairly famous artist's model whose nickname I always like, which
was Nini Fish-Face. (laughing) Voiceover: That doesn't sound very nice. Voiceover: Well I think
she has a lovely face. Voiceover: She's beautiful. What's important to remember as
we're talking about this, for me, is that we look at this and
this just looks like two
people dressed up at the opera and we easily lose sight of what
it was like in Paris in the 1870s. Issues of class and dress and all these
codes that are kind of lost to us now but that we really need
to decode the painting. Voiceover: It's very enjoyable just to
look at the sumptuousness of her dress but then also thinking about the idea
that this was a scene of modern life. Voiceover: This way that she's on display. She immediately becomes
a specific kind of woman. Voiceover: Yes, and the status symbol
and social class that's inherint in that. Voiceover: But without that modesty of
a middle class woman who would have gone to the opera and without also probably
a kind of modestly and uprightness of a truly aristocratic woman. So she becomes a very specific type. Voiceover: But I love thinking
that a contemporary viewer
of this would have known that right away. Voiceover: Immediately. Voiceover: And people had this
whole body of knowledge at the time of what social class you belonged to based
on how you presented yourself in public. Voiceover: And it might be interesting
also then to go out into our own world, out into the streets of London and
think about the ways that we read people based on what they wear
and who they're with. (piano music)