Twin Bottles 2007

Curator: This is William Balthazar Rose's "Twin Bottles," an oil painting from 2007. The objects sit rather simply atop what looks like a humble table. What do you make of it? Editor: My first impression is that it's quite muted, somber even. The tonality leans toward browns and grays. It is clearly figural in that there are some discernible figures. What a rather plain configuration. Curator: Look at how Rose renders the bottles, they aren't idealized forms; you can almost feel the presence of mass-produced glass, of a daily encounter. There’s an acknowledgment of the everyday object and the industry which puts bottles such as these in common hands. Editor: Perhaps. But note the composition, too. See how the geometric shapes—the cylinders of the bottles, the near-pyramid—create a structured interplay? The artist organizes these forms on the plane to direct the eye and creates a unified, stable picture, and thereby grants the mundane a bit of sophistication. Curator: Right, yet one could argue that that so-called stability exists within the larger social context. For many, such humble items constitute their entire material world. Realism, as you describe it, depicts not only form but, more importantly, socio-economic relationships and daily realities. Editor: But the way the light catches the rim of that small container, how that edge creates depth and shape...That exists independently of class or industrial processes, surely. Curator: Of course not! Oil paint becomes another of such wares, distributed in a specific material and historical world to a selected number of participants in that world; it cannot be separated from a political economic history. Editor: And I believe that this detailed and delicate depiction of these things raises them beyond their typical role and illuminates a reality that is intrinsically present. Curator: Perhaps in the final estimation, the true accomplishment rests with revealing, if inadvertently, the quiet intersection between consumption and existence, labor, and experience. Editor: Or perhaps the appeal is found solely within the painting's controlled tonal range. Thank you for pointing that intersection out! It does leave an unexpected final feeling.