Rooftops, Pont-Aven 1897

Curator: Looking at this from here, the whole scene looks like a woven tapestry of ochre, blues, and greens. Editor: Indeed, that tactile quality is quite something. What are we looking at exactly? Curator: This is Childe Hassam's "Rooftops, Pont-Aven," created in 1897. He employed oil paint on canvas to render this bird’s-eye view. It gives the viewer a new perspective of the Pont-Aven settlement, not centered around human forms, it really decenters traditional urban landscapes and offers a perspective on modernity through architectural planes rather than bustling cityscapes. Editor: It's interesting, isn't it? This rooftop view gives me a strange sense of intimacy with the town and also distance; like peering into someone's private thoughts from a great height. There's something voyeuristic but gentle about it, don't you think? Curator: It's the Impressionistic style that softens that potentially imposing gaze. The broken brushstrokes dissolve hard boundaries. You're encouraged to wander. Consider also, that these were the very rooftops seen by the artist community that took hold in Pont-Aven during that era. Editor: Right, there's something compelling about how mundane it appears to be at first glance, yet becomes rather captivating when one notices all those different patterns of rooftops and chimneys. Every little building feels like its own person. It does encourage the sense that one is part of a much larger fabric. It makes me consider labor too; who were the people constructing and maintaining these buildings and roofs at that time, and what would their position be in the larger art landscape? Curator: Exactly! This approach can reveal socioeconomic structures within seemingly bucolic settings, prompting questions of class and labor, which have historically shaped both the creation and reception of Impressionist works. Hassam himself, as a privileged member of the art community, would have been implicated in those structures. It is quite something how just this little painting provokes broader awareness about the political economy of Impressionism! Editor: And just as powerfully provokes reflection. Like a personal challenge to discover the invisible histories lying behind those rooftops, a kind of meditative prompt to become more present to every lived context I find myself within.