Granada 1895

Editor: This painting is "Granada" by Denman Waldo Ross. It's an oil on panel and it looks like the artist layered the paint quite thickly. What does its materiality suggest to you? Curator: Considering the heavy impasto, I'm drawn to think about the artist's labor. The physical act of applying paint, the cost of those pigments, and the means of obtaining them, tells us about his social positioning and the consumption of art during that era. Editor: So you're saying the way the paint is applied points to the economy of art? Curator: Precisely. We should also consider who would have consumed such an artwork, and what that says about the status of both artist and patron. Editor: I never thought about the paint itself as a marker of economic conditions. Curator: It shifts our understanding from aesthetic appreciation to material analysis, doesn't it?