Dimensions: support: 762 x 559 mm
Copyright: © The estate of Adrian Stokes | CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 DEED, Photo: Tate
Curator: Adrian Stokes' "Olive Terraces," housed here at the Tate, is a canvas of layered light, isn't it? Editor: It’s true – the materiality has a kind of sun-drenched glow, but the repetition of form makes me wonder about the actual labor of cultivation. Curator: Ah, but isn't that repetition part of the landscape's rhythm, a visual echo of the care, the endless picking? I imagine Stokes felt that deeply. Editor: Maybe, but I can't help thinking of olive oil production, the extraction, pressing—a very material engagement that goes beyond the picturesque. Curator: Still, to capture light like that... it feels almost spiritual, doesn't it? Editor: Perhaps it is, but for me, it prompts the questions about what is consumed and what remains, which I find equally as moving.
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http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/stokes-olive-terraces-t00721
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This picture was painted in 1938 at Rapallo on the Italian Riviera but was largely repainted some fourteen years later. The subject of a stable environment in which man and nature combine to orderly purpose had great appeal to Stokes. He wrote : 'The conditions of Mediterranean agriculture are nearly always gratifying to the aesthetic sense. Here, produce so often demands the sculptural, domestic and architectural aid of man ... Olives love their man-made terraces that go in stone perspective up the piedmont.' Gallery label, September 2004
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