At the Cafe, Rouen 1880

Editor: So, this is Caillebotte’s “At the Cafe, Rouen,” painted around 1880, with oil on canvas. I find the formal attire worn indoors very interesting, almost like they're always "on display." What draws your attention to this piece? Curator: Consider the cafe itself. Who owned it? Who frequented it? Caillebotte, with his bourgeois background, is not just representing a scene but also implicating himself within a specific system of material production and consumption. These cafes were new social spaces, emerging due to industrial shifts and impacting class relations. Editor: I see what you mean! It's not just people-watching, but observing how consumer culture is evolving, how leisure is being redefined. Do you think Caillebotte is critiquing or celebrating that? Curator: I believe Caillebotte is examining these changes. Look at the materiality of the painting. The thick brushstrokes, the textures— they aren’t merely representational. They are physical manifestations of labor, a contrast to the smooth surfaces of earlier academic painting that tried to hide their making. How does that influence your interpretation? Editor: Well, if he's drawing attention to the *process* of painting, that makes the artifice of the scene stand out even more. The fact that he's using paint to depict people using *things*, spending their leisure time consuming... it's layered! Curator: Precisely. Caillebotte's choice of oil paint itself links him to a history of artistic production supported by industrial advances in pigment creation, the very means by which one could be leisurely inside the cafe in the first place. Editor: That’s fascinating. It really does make me rethink how I view Impressionism in general, seeing it through this material lens. Curator: And perhaps it prompts us to ask, what materials are used today to document people within leisure settings and with what social implications for our consumption patterns. Editor: Absolutely, a very thoughtful insight that’s got me thinking.