These two essays mainly talk about the understanding of the painting A Bar at the Folies-Bergere by Edouard Manet. Also, both of them develop a deep understanding of a social term, which is called modernity, by viewing the painting A Bar at the Folies-Bergere. However, the authors of two readings have the totally different understandings of painting, besides, those different understandings also focus on women’s status in late nineteenth century. Griselda Pollock declaims that this painting represented a sexual issue in that age and women was limited in public society, on the contrary, Ruth E Iskin believes that this painting was a commercial display, or a poster, and women’s status was changing at that age. In my opinion, I think Iskin’s argument…show more content… When Iskin tries to support his opinion, he always uses the daily life subjects to illustrate, which is very convincing. For example, Iskin provides a caption reading from magazine that described the busy and crowded atmosphere of mass consumption in the second half of the nineteenth century. Everyone knows that the magazine must describe the real situation of society, so this example is very reliable. Besides, Iskin shows the first commercial poster, Au Paradis des Dames, which illustrate that women were very active at mass consumption period . In the poster, a woman stands in the middle and many female shoppers followed behind her , which also demonstrates the active movement of women in mass consumption period. However, Pollock provides many other artists’ art works as examples, such as “The Loge” by Mary Cassatt and Auguste Renoir. She wants to use those two works to illustrate that the bourgeois women who appeared in public space are spectators and costumers, and the other world women, who appear in bar or café, worked for the purpose of selling themselves . The problem is how Pollock knows that fact by viewing those art works? She does not provide any further evidences to prove whether those art works are telling the truth of social situation, which just like Pollock’s analysis, or