Model Study 1879

Editor: Here we have Anders Zorn's "Model Study" from 1879, created using oil paint. I'm struck by how realistic the figure is, but the background seems much looser, almost unfinished. What aspects jump out to you in this piece? Curator: The interesting thing to consider here is not just the image *of* a body, but how the body *as labor* figures into the whole endeavor of academic painting. How many hours did this model stand, under what conditions? We're so often presented with the finished product, that the material conditions that are actually involved in the making are obscured. Editor: So, it's less about the final image and more about the act of creating it? Curator: Precisely. Consider the layers of oil paint, built up over time, and what those material choices and application techniques tell us about artistic production during this period. This wasn't a fleeting impression captured en plein air, this was a sustained process requiring bodies in specific conditions, laboring, under capital's demand to generate art objects. Look at the way the brushstrokes create not just flesh, but an object of study, and the implications of the model as a worker, as flesh made product. Editor: I hadn’t considered that at all, how the act of *making* the art is almost as important as the art itself. Curator: It really pushes you to think about the socio-economic circumstances involved. Do we know the models' compensation, the space itself, heating or lighting conditions, any number of environmental concerns regarding the process. The labor and commodification aspect really does reframe how we think about beauty or expression in traditional painting, wouldn't you agree? Editor: Absolutely. I'll never look at a nude study the same way again. It’s all about the human and material cost behind it.