Butter Dish (Hen) c. 1941

This hen butter dish by Edward Bashaw is rendered in delicate pencil on paper, somewhere between a technical drawing and an absurdist design. It’s pale, almost ghostly, as if conjured from a dream of Americana. I imagine Bashaw hunched over his drafting table, carefully hatching the feathery details of the eagle perched on top. What was he thinking as he inscribed "The American Hen" onto the woven nest, which bears eggs labelled with island names? The pale palette and precise lines give it a surreal quality, like a blueprint for a utopian--or dystopian--breakfast. You know, this reminds me of some of Claes Oldenburg’s soft sculptures, inflating everyday objects to monumental, and slightly menacing, proportions. Bashaw is in dialogue with a whole history of artists who find the uncanny in the mundane. It’s a reminder that even the simplest objects can hold complex ideas, and that artists are always riffing on each other, remixing the past to imagine new futures.