Untitled (Still Life with Guitar and Fruit) c. mid 1930s

This lithograph shows a still life with a guitar and fruit, by Ina Perham Story. Look at the guitar, its form broken into facets, yet still recognizable. The instrument, a symbol of harmony and leisure, appears frequently in art, conjuring feelings of romance and festivity. Think of ancient Greek lyres, embodiments of Apollonian order. Yet, here, the guitar is fragmented. We see the echoes of Cubism, where objects are dissected to show multiple viewpoints simultaneously. This fragmentation speaks to a deeper unease. The orderly still life, a traditional genre, is disrupted. The guitar, typically a source of pleasure, is now deconstructed, reflecting the fractured psyche of the modern world. It's as if the familiar comfort of music is being questioned, its harmony challenged by the dissonance of the times. The human psyche grapples with a changing world, and the image becomes a powerful expression of the shifting emotional landscape.