Strawberry Tea Set 1912

Editor: Here we have Childe Hassam's "Strawberry Tea Set," created in 1912. It's an oil painting, and I'm immediately struck by the…domesticity of the scene. The careful arrangement of the set, the woman’s contemplative gaze…What stands out to you when you look at this? Curator: I find myself considering the labor embedded in the materials. Hassam uses oil paint, a refined substance industrially produced and sold in tubes – quite different from pigments ground by hand. How does this industrialized production shift the relationship between the artist and their medium? And then, of course, we have the tea set itself, likely mass-produced, yet carefully adorned with a hand-painted design. Editor: That’s a great point about mass production versus the hand-painted details. I hadn't considered that tension. Curator: Exactly. And the painting performs a certain type of labor too. Think of the woman represented, perhaps affluent enough not to perform manual labor; this everyday scene obscures labor by aestheticizing objects linked to pleasure and status. It invites the viewer to appreciate craftsmanship without considering the socioeconomic structure making this type of consumer good, this "tasteful" artwork possible. Editor: So, by representing the tea set and the woman together, Hassam might unintentionally be commenting on the social stratification of labor and leisure? Curator: Precisely. The seemingly simple subject matter reveals layers of complexity when we consider the means of production, consumption, and the social relationships they reflect. Are we meant to celebrate an aesthetic moment, or examine a material world made possible by the labor of others? Editor: This completely changes how I see this painting. I was focused on the aesthetic qualities, the light and the color. But you've made me think about what isn’t necessarily visible at first glance. Curator: The unseen elements of production shape what we perceive, always. Considering that can make our experience of any work much deeper.