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One Fine Show: “Mary Cassatt, After Impressionism” at the Art Institute of Chicago

The museum's first exhibition devoted to the artist in more than 25 years gathers over 75 paintings, pastels and prints made after 1886, revealing a painter of formal daring and fierce independence.

I grew up expatriate and so have always had a soft spot for outsiders. When it comes to art history, this means enjoying the extent to which artists often reject the movements with which they are associated. Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg refused the “Pop” framing, and most Abstract Expressionists hated that name as well. Donald Judd, the godfather of minimalism, rejected not only that word but also the idea that he was even making sculpture at all, preferring instead the term “specific objects.” The label “Impressionist” famously started as an insult but Mary Cassatt (1844-1926) tended to prefer the original term “Independent” anyway. In 1904, the Art Institute of Chicago tried to give her a prize for The Caress, and she sent the money back with a note: “I was one of the original ‘Independents’ who founded a society where there was to be no jury no medals no awards.”

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