Bowl 1935 - 1942

Curator: This object study, simply titled "Bowl," was rendered between 1935 and 1942, courtesy of Isidore Steinberg. Editor: My first thought is that this has a strikingly ethereal quality, almost ghostly, even though it’s a rendering of a fairly mundane domestic object. The muted blues and greens are surprisingly soothing. Curator: Steinberg was clearly concerned with light and volume here, wasn’t he? Note the graduated tones and how he models the form to capture its contours, lending the medium a sense of airy spaciousness. The surface, even rendered in paint, possesses the sheen you’d expect from glass. Editor: Indeed. But the question I’m asking is, why choose this subject matter? In the interwar period, the representation of humble objects elevated the everyday. Consider also that this was during the depression, during a period where we were trying to return back to normalcy and to emphasize beauty that could be easily attained Curator: Certainly the bowl's repeated motifs of stylized forms suggest function and streamlined modernism but those echoed figures within add a layer of complexity, creating both depth and visual interest. They operate in the pictorial space with formal assurance. Editor: Do you think that repeated abstracted figure also stands for production during this time? Glass, like any household object in the ‘30s was being heavily mass produced. Does that repeating emblem echo its social role in a growing materialist environment? Curator: An astute observation. Though beyond those sociopolitical undertones, Steinberg, through these shapes and tonalities, encourages us to investigate its function as both a useful vessel and a site for playful optical illusion, if you allow it. Editor: So it’s both function and metaphor—material product, and social object, mirroring both modernist aesthetics and everyday life, which gives me quite a bit to think about. Thanks. Curator: An enlightening exchange, indeed. A simple bowl, yet, a complex microcosm reflecting an era’s material and social aspirations, revealed through light and shape.