Seated Woman Drying Her Feet 1902

Curator: There's a strange quiet intimacy in this drawing. Editor: Absolutely. We're looking at Thèophile Alexandre Steinlen's "Seated Woman Drying Her Feet," created around 1902. It's a delicate rendering in pencil and possibly watercolor on paper, currently held at the Art Institute of Chicago. Curator: I find it incredibly poignant, this seemingly mundane act elevated to a level of vulnerability. Her hunched posture and downcast gaze suggests a sense of weariness, but also perhaps contentment in solitude. Editor: I'm struck by the simplicity of means he used to create it; pencil, paper and watercolour and perhaps printmaking is not always associated with 'high art', yet he captures something profound with very little material cost or machinery. He shows that art doesn't necessarily need complex systems to capture true meaning. Curator: The symbol of the foot has been fraught with religious meaning: subservience or pilgrimages of purification. In many artistic depictions the cleaning or washing of feet suggests piety and transformation. Is she actively performing an act of devotion, or is the woman simply cleaning? The artist’s careful rendering imbues a simple action with monumental weight, even spiritual. Editor: And to continue on that notion of process, let's acknowledge that as a print, likely an etching, there's a labor intensive means of producing these images; one that invites us to contemplate the societal role of artists as cultural reproducers, even in an industrialising world. Curator: A striking image of fleeting human grace. Editor: A truly considered portrayal using elemental mediums that connect us to labour, the real body, and time.