Octave Tassaert’s ‘Ne fais pas la cruelle!’ (Don’t Play the Heartless One!’) made me think about the role of the spectator in appreciating modern art. My initial reaction to Tassaert’s painting was to laugh. There is something humorous about the incongruous cross-dressing. Although the man wears a long dress, he does not seem to lose his masculinity. His facial features and expressions are considerably masculine, given his heavy mustache and bushy sideburns. The wig he wears fails to hide his thick hair. His posture comes across as a comic attempt to imitate femininity. Similarly, the woman is dressed in tights, a top hat, and a baggy shirt. Her legs are spread wide apart and she appears to be mischievous as she lifts the man’s dress to expose his legs. But again, her facial features do not match her actions. She has a small face with delicate features such as a small nose, thin lips, and a pale complexion. Her sexually suggestive lifting of the dress is not aggressive, but dainty. The top (much like the man’s wig) fails to hide the woman’s light curls. So why did I find this picture humorous? Am I correct to find it funny? How would I react if the facial features matched their actions? I analyzed the painting once more in an effort to try to answer these questions. What struck me as humorous is that the subjects seemed to be joking around. The title of the painting, Don’t Play the Heartless One, suggests that the subject of the painting is not terribly grave. Instead it is playful. I believe that I have gathered enough substantial evidence from the painting to argue confidently that it is in fact a comic scene, but I realize that my interpretation, and more specifically the details that lead me to my conclusion, are open for debate. To answer my final question, I realized that being a spectator is more difficult than it seems. For instance, if the painting was of only the man, I might consider the painting less comic. I might think that the man was going through a dramatic identity crisis. If the woman was alone, I might think that the woman was trying to make a statement about her tedious, captive, unfulfilling life. Thus being a spectator is difficult because the context in which a work of art is placed in can alter our ability to analyze a painting without prejudice.