Ancienne Tour près de Lanark (Original Title) 1826

Editor: This is "Ancienne Tour près de Lanark," a lithograph by Richard Parkes Bonington from 1826. There’s almost a melancholy feel to the print – the crumbling tower, the distant cityscape... What strikes you about it? Curator: What I see is a careful articulation of materials. Notice how Bonington uses the lithographic process itself. The very *making* of the image underscores the decay it depicts. The stone crumbles in the image and crumbles during the work involved in the process. Editor: So, the *process* mirrors the subject? Curator: Precisely. The romantic fascination with ruins speaks not only to the past, but also to the labor of both constructing and deconstructing. Who quarried this stone? Who built the tower, and why? And then, thinking about the labor behind the printmaking itself – the artist, the printers – there are layers of human work materialized here. Editor: It’s fascinating to think about the physical labor, almost like archaeological strata. Did the intended audience at the time consider this aspect of the work? Curator: Very likely. Consider the social context. Romanticism was intertwined with emergent industrial capitalism. A nostalgia for a pre-industrial past exists, yes, but also there are early modes of mechanical production coming into focus, and prints such as these had the opportunity to circulate widely, offering views accessible to a growing public. The very accessibility challenges traditional definitions of "high art." Editor: I hadn’t considered the impact of its accessibility – the consumption of the image itself as part of the story. Curator: Exactly. It asks us to consider value: the tower, the landscape, the *print*. All objects shaped by, and shaping, our social relationships. What have you taken away from this? Editor: The layers of meaning, not just in the image but in the creation and consumption of it. The "crumbling" happening at every level of production... Thank you!