Scoop c. 1936

Editor: This is Michael Dadante's "Scoop," a watercolor drawing from around 1936. There's a certain worn, functional quality to it that's compelling. It feels very direct, almost like a technical drawing. What's your read on this, considering its medium and time? Curator: What I immediately see is a challenge to traditional artistic hierarchies. Dadante, by focusing intently on the materiality of this…scoop, is elevating what would normally be considered a mundane, functional object to the realm of art. The watercolor medium itself, typically associated with landscape or portraiture, is here used to painstakingly document the texture, form, and evident wear of a tool. What was it used for, what materials do you think it is made of, and by whose hand? Editor: That’s a great point about elevating the everyday. Given that it was made during the Depression era, does the object become a kind of symbol of labor or resourcefulness? Could the fact that he painted it using watercolor -- itself fairly accessible -- comment on the prevailing material conditions and available means of artistic production? Curator: Precisely. We see this interest in labor, in the evidence of use, in the raw materiality of everyday objects throughout the art produced during the 1930s, often through the lens of social realism. The very act of depicting it meticulously transforms it into more than just a scoop; it is transformed into a kind of…witness of the era's hardships and resourcefulness. Think of Walker Evans photographing tools - is there an association here, or are they disparate modes? Editor: I see a connection to Evans in that impulse to document. Thanks, I'm walking away considering how materials speak about labor, skill and even social status, rather than taking them for granted. Curator: Exactly. Thinking through materiality, processes, and context provides a much fuller art experience.