Shoreline 

Editor: We are looking at John Miller's "Shoreline," an oil painting with an impasto technique. It strikes me as a very clean and simple composition, almost geometric in its stark division of space. What visual elements stand out to you? Curator: The most compelling aspect is precisely that division: a tripartite horizontal arrangement, sharply defined. The textured application of paint generates the "real" in realism within an aesthetic devoid of almost any specific representational markers. We can also analyze how this is both realism and modernist abstraction at the same time; can you explain that paradox to me? Editor: So, it's representational because it's depicting something from the real world - a shoreline. But where does the abstract part come in? Curator: Exactly, but where does one see realism or specific detail in, for instance, the beach? One can only conclude its designation from relative position and implied adjacency. That reductive mode pushes into an abstract formal reading— color planes interacting as geometric, rectangular masses. Observe how each division contrasts with the other by color and value alone; and how the brushwork operates at once to confirm materiality but simultaneously undo its image through the relative lack of differentiation. How is that different from, say, a Rothko color field painting? Editor: That's fascinating - I never thought about realism in that way before. Now, seeing those rectangular masses it’s a much flatter depiction of form, and with the limited palette and broad strokes you lose the details to see it in parts, just pure form. I appreciate how you guided me to notice the way it operates on multiple visual registers! Curator: Precisely! Noticing those elements reveals that form is substance, especially as realism merges so effectively with Modernist thought.