Piecenumbertwo_wii, wii, wii

The Impressionists were the first modernist painters. Which means they painted modernity, interpreted modernity, such as it was in the mid to late 19th century. And what was modernity? Modernity of the period has a number of definitions, but it essentially about change, about responses to change. These changes were within society and within the spaces where society defined itself: the private and the public. The city became a grand public space where men (and it was predominantly men) were able to define themselves based on new ideologies and myths, based primarily on leisure, consumption, spectacles (of the showy kind, not glasses) and money.
The Impressionists captured these public spaces, and all their complexity, eroticism and danger. The private spaces were of course more intimate and yet were no less defined: women and children had a place and a role to play in the home, just as they did (even by their exclusion) in the public spaces.
Today, we have a more fluid relationship with public/private spaces. This blog is public: no-one is restricted from viewing it, except by their not knowing it exists. It is also quite private in both my construction of it, and the audience's reception of it. Likewise, in the image here, the couple play a computer game in their front room and (despite my presence as the photographer) this is a private action. But technology has allowed this to become a public affair: the computer is connected wirelessly to the internet and the couple can challenge any other users around the world to a game of virtual tennis.
This is our new society: geography is by-passed; language, religion and race are by-passed. All you need is a bit of wealth and a bit of leisure and the whole world can play virtual games against one another without leaving their home.
The other significance of this image comes in the relationship between the sexes. Whilst it would be naive to say that men and women live in perfect equality today, there is certainly less of a division than in the period the Impressionists were painting when women were responsible to children, the home and looking nice in a corset, whilst the men could go out and explore all the darkest corners of the city without fear for his reputation. Today, men and women's leisure and consumption is more equal: as in this image of marital bliss around the Wii. Whilst this image isn't typical of all households, most homes today do not have such sharply defined spaces for the different sexes to spend their time.