smellson

In the original painting, the gaze is very much about privilege. The white woman who looks at the camera is allowed to interact with the viewer, while the black servant is made to be part of the scenery. However, neither party is as privileged as the viewer who gets to look at both of them. There is a sort of ownership in the looking. Both women are made to be objects of desire. The desire could be fulfilled, if you are rich enough to pay for it. (To be honest, there is so much to say about this painting and many art historians have said it better and with more detail than I am here, so if you are interested, I suggest pursuing jstor, or at least the Wikipedia page.)

I have read a couple analysises that compare the black cat in the original to the white prostitute (a "lady of the night," plus the pussycat joke). However, to me the cat seems to be more tied to the servant as a racialized innuendo. Where the servant is denied looking at the viewer, the cat looks in her stead. 

In the episode 23 version, the gazes of the figures are reversed. Mikage is unaware of the truth that both he and Mamiya are dead, while Anthy-as-Mamiya is nothing but aware. For this piece, I wanted to keep the reversed gazes. Anthy always is watching, catalouging who is watching her, and who has their eyes closed. Over and over, Anthy is made servant to Akio's newest student sacrifice. Over and over, she tends to this person like she does her flowers. She boxes them up with a little bow and gives them to her brother. Later, she kills them, also for her brother. Sends them down the river, because if Akio doesn't look at her, nobody can see her at all. (If it wasn't clear, the cat in my drawing is Utena, and it gazes at the viewer in her stead.) 

Anthy's role in this is very much a mark of her exploitation. People expect her, because of her race and gender, to act in the role of a servant/bride, which in Ohtori is the same thing. Because it is expected of her, Anthy plays into it, hides behind the role so she can get people to behave a certain way. Often, this is the way that Akio needs them to, because Anthy loves her brother no matter what he does, and wants him to love her back. She is permanently aware of how she's perceived and how others will react to her. This is a survival mechanism, made necessary by her race and gender. Otherwise, she will be sacrificed again.

I also think there is a factor of race in Anthy and Akio's connection. In addition to growing up together/Akio raising Anthy, they are both outsiders to Ohtori, and outsiders to Japan. There is a line in episode 39 where Anthy says, "Knowing everything of the world, you chose this path," to which Akio replies, "And knowing everything of you, I love you." Anthy is distant from her classmates, made into an alien by virtue of her race, her upbringing, her abuse. Meanwhile, Akio and Anthy are close because they share these things, albeit with them on different sides of the latter factor. Anthy believes that Akio is the only one in Ohtori who can really know her, and this is a belief he has trained in her. If she loves him, if she believes he's the only one who can see her truthfully, then in his gaze she is made real. She will give him the cat over and over again, and she will kill it just so he keeps looking at her. Akio doesn't even have to get his hands dirty. Anthy is always the one making the sacrifice, taking the swords.

Of course, over the last arc, Anthy and Utena become closer. Utena gains an understanding of what it is like to be perceived in this way by Akio, and by the unspecified viewer. There are many framing devices in RGU. There's the rose boarder, the stage, Akio's cameras, how everything is a fairytale. In the movie, Anthy's body is shown cut up between picture frames. The frame is the narrative, the story where the princess is saved by the prince, where they fall in love, where the witch is evil and deserves death. We all participate in shaping the frame. We view stories and paintings through it. We craft our own little fairytales. We cut our lives down into little myths where girls like Utena are stars and girls like Anthy are witches. In my drawing, which is about episode 33 mostly, Anthy and Utena are inhabitanting the frame that Akio controls. "We are all in our coffins," and the coffin is the frame we build for ourselves.

But this shared inhabiting of the frame, the shared abuse, is not what allows Anthy to connect to Utena and break free of Akio. Anthy has similar trauma to many other Ohtori students, but none of them made the same connection that she and Utena do. That connection comes instead from the cantarella scene, where Utena asks for a future with Anthy beyond Ohtori, and then again on the rooftop where they both apologize for acting in their assigned roles within the narrative structure. Both of these scenes, while still being held within Akio's world, speak of a world beyond the fairytale. A world that is 10 years after we've graduated, a world where we are two kids crying on a rooftop and nothing else. Within Akio's picture frame, Utena will always be the princess and Anthy will always be the witch. Akio will always be the only one to understand Anthy because they are both evil (the dragon and the witch) and everyone else is innocent. But only outside of the picture frame can Anthy be a person. Only outside of the picture frame can Anthy and Utena love each other.

Anyways, I think that's why RGU has so many art historical references. It is about the stories we construct and share. Olympia itself is a reference to another painting (Venus of Urbino, 1534, by Titian, which in turn is a reference to Sleeping Venus, 1510, by Giorgione.) We have a grand old tradition of repainting this scene, and with every iteration, we shift the narrative and the roles that women occupy within it. That is why I picked it for this illustration. Olympia is about updating what is in the picture frame. Any repaint of it simply changes what is in the frame, which I think works for episode 33. But RGU doesn't end there; it is not a tragedy. What it does instead is it says: "When the picture becomes intolerable, don't repaint it. Leave it behind."

(Anyways, this was a long ass post. Thank you for coming to my this. #mythis. It sorta just became an essay so I'm sorry if it veered off into territory uncharted by your ask. There are still things I haven't covered, such as the split rosette motif on the background wall, which my dear friend and resident history nerd @sofitai28 so kindly suggested and explained for me. I'll give the original motif below, as well as her explanation.)