Description

Bateau-Tableau’s object of study is a 19th-century naval painting that the artist purchased in a Paris antiques shop. After the first slide displays the artwork, the following slides explore the painting through a series of successive close-ups. As the recognizable picture dissolves, we focus instead on the varied textures of paint on the work’s surface, the weave of the canvas, and the nails that hold the canvas to the wooden stretcher bars. An image becomes an object.