San Diego Shores 1928

Editor: Here we have Maurice Braun's "San Diego Shores," painted in 1928 using oil paints. There's a raw energy in how the waves crash against the rocks. How would you interpret this particular landscape, especially considering when it was created? Curator: It's interesting that you call it energetic. Braun was painting this right before the Great Depression, wasn’t he? Look at the visual composition; the wildness of the sea juxtaposed against the stability of the land. I think this painting can be viewed as a reflection of the social climate of the time. Braun might be unconsciously mirroring the precarity of economic systems soon to crumble, but cloaked within what appears to be typical landscape imagery. Do you agree that this may reveal social unrest? Editor: That’s a really interesting idea, viewing the landscape as a metaphor. I hadn’t considered that. It also has strong ties with impressionism but somehow has this stark quality of realism. I can't quite connect that idea into society! Curator: Well, consider this. Braun spent time studying in Europe and was part of a burgeoning art scene in Southern California at the time. What kind of impact do you think the institutional art market, specifically galleries exhibiting this type of work, would have had on an artist like Braun? Editor: I imagine those galleries played a crucial role, almost curating a particular image of California, a marketable image of both raw natural beauty and stability... perhaps masking some of the precarity you mentioned earlier? Curator: Exactly! By promoting these landscapes, galleries contributed to the narrative of California as an untouched paradise. And in the backdrop were other less positive socioeconomic conditions and political agendas, concealed by such artwork, or worse still - actively sanitizing its historical context. Editor: So the painting functions almost as a form of… propaganda? Wow. I never thought of landscape painting having so much depth and context! Curator: Precisely. It just shows how much the politics of imagery are part of even the seemingly innocuous art forms. Hopefully you found our brief conversation here an enlightening one. Editor: Definitely! I see much more than just crashing waves now.