Return from the hunt c. 1902

Editor: So this sketch, "Return from the Hunt" by Paul Gauguin, dates back to around 1902 and it seems to be pencil on paper. It gives me a feeling of…transience? Almost like a fleeting memory, particularly with its light pencil work. How do you see it, from your perspective? Curator: Well, looking at this pencil sketch, I see more than just a fleeting moment. I'm drawn to the materiality of the work itself – the paper, the graphite. These were goods produced and distributed within a very specific colonial context. Gauguin's artistic process here involved transforming these readily available, perhaps even mundane, materials into an image laden with exoticism and fantasy. What sort of labor produced the paper? Editor: That's an interesting angle – I hadn't considered the implications of even the paper's origins. So, you're thinking about how the production of materials informs the meaning of the image, even if the image is, ostensibly, of something else entirely? Curator: Exactly. And further, how that production intersects with the image Gauguin creates. He depicts what appears to be a return from a hunt, perhaps romanticizing a "primitive" existence far removed from the industrial labor that provided the very means for its representation. We can challenge the boundaries between Gauguin's 'high art' and the social realities embedded in its materials. The “exotic” is enabled by very grounded economic forces. What did it cost Gauguin to make this sketch? What was its intended destination? Editor: That’s a powerful perspective. It completely reframes my understanding; from a simple sketch to a commentary on consumption, labor and material reality during the period of the French colonial empire. I’ll definitely look at art with this in mind from now on. Curator: Glad I could illuminate a new perspective; hopefully you have seen materiality as a critical agent, rather than neutral platform.