Candlestick c. 1936

Curator: So, here we have "Candlestick," a pencil drawing, created around 1936 by Milton Grubstein. It's a meticulous rendering, isn't it? Editor: Mmm, meticulous... and melancholic. Something about that grey, those precise lines... it feels like a study of something already fading. Curator: I think that hits on the context, actually. It was likely made during Grubstein’s time working for the Works Progress Administration, a New Deal program. These artists were essentially documenting and celebrating American design and industry during the Depression. It’s also interesting how it depicts, maybe critiques, ideas of luxury in that historical moment. Editor: Right. It’s so beautifully, painstakingly made... and of a candlestick! Something almost quaint, suddenly. Not mass-produced; rather, an idealized object. I wonder, did the artist see the beauty, and a hint of decay in making this pencil-lead version? Curator: That gets into materiality. Pencil as a medium itself is inherently tied to the process of planning and sketching, the in-between phase, if you will. Using pencil here underlines the candlestick's role as an article of manufacture, a step in creating the finished candlestick itself. It certainly directs us away from seeing a real, bronze candlestick, and instead at its inception as a functional luxury object in an assembly line of commodities. Editor: It does force us to confront its potential to be commodified; there's this delicate and ghostly quality that adds to a feeling of suspension, being trapped mid-manufacture or distribution. The drawing also calls attention to geometry in common household item in order to remind us how its presence is manufactured with intention. Curator: Well, looking at it now, my interpretation also changed as we considered its role in the art, social, and industrial history! Editor: Precisely. The beauty of dialogue is it transforms something potentially obsolete into an echo of memory.