Saltimbanques 1930

Curator: Let's examine Rupert Bunny's 1930 oil painting, Saltimbanques. What's your immediate reaction to it? Editor: It feels…stagey. Not in a bad way, but the figures have a deliberately posed quality. And all that lush drapery behind them reads like a painted backdrop. Curator: The title refers to traveling performers, and this does evoke that fleeting, itinerant lifestyle. I see symbols of transience here. Notice the man balancing the bowl, a universal image of precarious balance, and also the three juggling. What does the act of performing tell us? Editor: It speaks to a specific kind of labor. Making spectacle from skill – almost like manufacturing a dream, a temporary escape. Look at the surface: see the layers of brushstrokes, the almost casual way the paint is applied to the drapery? He's drawing attention to the artificiality, to the process of creation. Curator: I'm interested in the layering you mentioned. It's also emotional. The three figures embody certain qualities – perhaps physical prowess, delicate skill, steady poise – but it is the image of these players which endures throughout memory. How does that painterly quality give depth to this transient genre painting? Editor: Exactly! By showing us the "behind the scenes," Bunny’s giving us a glimpse into the physical making of their fleeting art. The very deliberate art of these images points to the construction of spectacle itself as labor, as physical output that is consumed by an audience. The roses feel equally performative, the color is almost garish in contrast to the rest. Curator: Do you see these recurring symbols from traveling shows over the ages in a cultural framework? We might also notice they're placed within a distinct impressionistic interpretation in line with its contemporaries. Editor: In our consumption and documentation of Saltimbanques we further remove it from its physical manifestation in the painting! Curator: Indeed, an infinite reflection in art history. Thanks, Rupert, for allowing this unique introspection of the making of performance art.