Vashon Academy 2008

Editor: We're looking at "Vashon Academy," a painting by Bo Bartlett from 2008. It seems to depict an artist painting a nude model. The composition is pretty straightforward. What do you make of it? Curator: Well, let's think about the materials first. Bartlett uses paint, presumably oil or acrylic given the date. The canvas itself – think about its production, the labor involved in creating that surface, stretching it, priming it. And the artist's tools, brushes manufactured, distributed, and then employed. Editor: So you’re seeing the painting less as a depiction, and more as a result of… industrial processes? Curator: Precisely! Look closer. It's also about labor, isn’t it? The model's labor of posing, the artist's physical and mental work. Consider the academy setting. What does that imply about art education, the commodification of skill, the social context that creates the demand for these kinds of paintings? How does that setting influence the labor of these figures? Editor: That’s interesting. I hadn’t considered the art school as a factor. So, the painting itself becomes evidence of that labor and that commodification. Is Bartlett perhaps making a statement about the nature of artistic production itself? Curator: That's what a materialist reading invites! It forces us to consider not just *what* is represented, but *how* and under what conditions. Where do the materials originate? Who makes the canvas and paint? The implications about value judgments shift. What is ‘high art’ anyway if not an accumulation of various types of production and extraction, if we see materials and methods? Editor: I never thought about the painting in those terms before. Thanks! Curator: A pleasure! Now you have more avenues to interpret visual culture!