The Golden Age 1862

Editor: Here we have Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres's "The Golden Age," housed here at the Harvard Art Museums. The figures seem idealized, almost dreamlike. What strikes you about this work? Curator: I see a utopian vision built upon specific material conditions. Consider the labor needed to produce the pigments, the canvas, and the artist’s training. Ingres visualizes leisure, but it is leisure made possible by exploitation of resources and probably human labor. Editor: That’s a very different perspective than I had considered. So, you're saying the painting's beauty masks the material realities that underpin it? Curator: Precisely. The myth of the Golden Age ignores its own means of production. This painting becomes an artifact of its own social context, reflecting and obscuring the realities of its creation. Editor: I see. It's like the painting itself is a product of a system it doesn't acknowledge. Thanks for making me think about this in a new way!