Docks,East Boston 1900 - 1904

Curator: What strikes you first about this mixed-media artwork, "Docks, East Boston", created by Maurice Prendergast between 1900 and 1904? Editor: The entire scene is veiled in a haze, almost like a memory. Yet the rigging of the ships, those masts reaching to the sky – they definitely evoke ambition and perhaps the romance of distant voyages. Curator: Indeed. I’m intrigued by Prendergast’s method. The loose application of watercolor layered over what appears to be pencil sketching, suggests an almost frantic attempt to capture the dynamism of the docks. It is clearly a harbor bustling with workers, and yet also, oddly frozen in place. Editor: The repetition of circular shapes too – the wheels of the carts, the umbrellas – almost implies ceaseless activity. Don't you think that those clusters are also almost like abstract icons denoting figures and suggesting crowds. What are your thoughts on it as a materialist? Curator: Well, seeing the visible labor evident, like figures clustered working along the docks gives evidence to the artist working on the move using readily transportable media that allows him to portray daily life. I see not so much frenetic energy as the work that must have underpinned global trade in this period. What is interesting, is how it seems almost incidental that Prendergast makes his study of this hub during an era of colonialism that relied heavily on these centers. What would you add, bearing in mind your understanding of its symbolism? Editor: It almost captures the essence of that time through his style of art; that frenetic activity, those circular shapes can, in fact, be also an emblem of temporal awareness; in this sense that docks become allegories for ceaseless human toil, reaching beyond borders, under a system with many consequences. Curator: Exactly! Through material traces – Prendergast’s quick sketches and the medium itself – he’s captured, unwittingly or otherwise, a specific period and a social system's operations. The choice of media adds a certain lightness to the gravity of industry. Editor: I couldn’t agree more. The painting is a cultural artifact ripe with encoded symbols from ambition to even perhaps unintended toil that still resonate today! Curator: So, an Impressionistic rendering made from modest means, hinting at broader socio-economic dynamics in the era it was created. Editor: And on the other hand, with potent symbolism still echoing across a great distance of time.