Tavern Sign 1935 - 1942

Curator: This work, simply titled "Tavern Sign," dates from somewhere between 1935 and 1942. Its medium includes drawing and painting on wood, specifically with oil paints. What are your initial thoughts? Editor: It's got that slightly melancholic feel, doesn't it? Like a foggy day at the edge of a moor. That bison staring out...He’s seen things, that's for sure. Curator: Observe how the anonymous artist integrates the wood grain directly into the image, becoming almost topographical. The bison's form emerges from the very material. It subverts traditional representational strategies. Editor: Absolutely. It's less about flawless depiction and more about…raw expression, maybe? Or is that just my projecting? I’m reminded of a blues riff, simple and loaded with soul. The wood gives it a resonance you wouldn't get on canvas. Curator: Note, too, the calculated colour palette. Earthy browns dominate. Teal and sienna edging creates framing. A play between the interior image and its literal external framing which seems almost Baroque. This directs and contains the focal point in an interesting dialectic. Editor: See, I'm wondering, was this actually hanging outside a pub somewhere? What kind of stories does this object whisper if it could speak? Makes me think of lonely cowboys and stiff whiskeys. Someone leaning on a bar swapping stories about their prize bull, perhaps? Curator: Regardless of provenance, its function as an ostensible "sign" diminishes, transcended by pictorial treatment and aesthetic self-awareness. An objet d'art is produced through complex material relations. Editor: Alright, alright, break it down and mystify the artist some more. Though, you have to wonder: what does it tell us about this particular anonymous artist, that they’d render an animal, worn as an icon in such a manner? A beast memorialized with such directness and presence, it holds you fast even now, all these years later. Curator: The careful formal interplay of wood, paint, and symbolic figuration generates an interesting interpretive tension that surpasses its mundane subject. Editor: Indeed, that weathered, knowing gaze sticks with you. I keep coming back to it. Even now, a story unfolds.