Audience 1943

Editor: This print, titled "Audience" by Ruth Gikow, dates to 1943. It's…well, striking! The figures are so stylized, almost like caricatures. There's something unsettling about the fixed expressions. What do you see in this piece? Curator: An audience, indeed! But of what sort? Look closely at the abstracted features, the flattened perspective. Gikow is playing with symbols of spectatorship, isn't she? Consider the period: 1943. What sort of ‘performances’ held the world’s attention then? Editor: You mean like newsreels about World War II? Curator: Precisely! Consider how the faces seem mask-like, drained of individual emotion, yet assembled together. The artist implies that there’s cultural weight here. What icons from that era of wartime uncertainty resonate for you? Editor: That’s fascinating… I was caught up in the surface and colours, but I now feel like I'm looking at collective experience. It looks almost like they are seated facing a stage but without empathy. Curator: Perhaps Gikow captures how easily individuals are shaped en masse, taking on collective anxieties or beliefs. The power of an audience lies not just in presence, but their potential for unity—or conformity. Does the composition prompt reflections on our own participation as viewers, today? Editor: I hadn’t considered it that way, but it makes me question the passivity of watching the news…the potential to be influenced or desensitized. Curator: Gikow encourages us to investigate those very symbols and dynamics still embedded in our world today. Visual memory makes culture. Editor: Wow, that’s… powerful! I'll definitely think about "Audience" differently now, not just as a quirky print but as a commentary on mass perception.