View of Library n.d.

Curator: Welcome, let's talk about George Cattermole’s "View of Library," currently held at the Art Institute of Chicago. Though undated, it presents a fascinating peek into, well, a library scene! Editor: My first thought? An attic, or some other crammed, secret space, given the rushed nature of the strokes—but not cramped in a bad way! A little messy but kind of buzzing with thought. Curator: It does feel incredibly immediate, doesn't it? Cattermole primarily worked in graphite, ink, and pencil on paper for this piece. Note the tentative lines of the sketch giving way to a richer application of ink in select areas. I get the sense of figures immersed, cocooned even, in this interior. Editor: Tentative is right! It speaks volumes, though, about access. Consider the materiality; graphite and ink—humble materials that make artwork feel both ephemeral and, ironically, somehow ‘realer’. What did it mean for Cattermole to portray scholarly spaces using everyday instruments of writing and sketching? It implies study shouldn't be something so unreachable. Curator: Yes! A place for the everyday. These might be men, perhaps clerics, absorbed in intellectual pursuits or perhaps even students at study? There's such quiet industry about the image that's also hinted at by the somewhat academic grouping of people around a table in the other room. I like the kind of intimacy the composition provides—almost as though we’ve been invited inside, unannounced! Editor: Exactly! And those repeating stacks, the architectural logic—or lack thereof. Those book stacks weren’t born spontaneously! Craftspeople spent their time selecting, sawing, joining… I’d love to know where Cattermole’s raw materials came from: The mines for graphite? Which factory was churning out his inks? To me it feels incomplete if we do not ponder labor in every element here—intellectual and industrial both! Curator: The thought processes behind making it all. And the space the library offers for so many disparate figures, physically close to one another in such small spaces. All captured on this quite diminutive piece of paper with these rudimentary but oh so precise mediums. It really pulls the viewer in. Editor: Incomplete but perfect, if you catch my drift. Curator: Precisely!