Air Breaks, from the Jokes series (N87) for Duke brand cigarettes 1890

Curator: This etching titled "Air Breaks," part of the Jokes series N87, was produced around 1890 for W. Duke, Sons & Co., a cigarette manufacturer. I find the depiction of this toiling figure to be rather curious. What’s your immediate take? Editor: There's something deeply unsettling, yet humorous about this image. The elongated features, the almost cartoonish exhaustion. It feels like a distorted mirror reflecting the plight of the working class. Curator: Precisely! It functions as both an Ukiyo-e and a caricature. The exaggeration is not only humorous, but serves as a comment on labor itself. This was mass-produced for commercial consumption, distributed within cigarette packs. It makes one wonder about its intended audience. Editor: The imagery, I think, taps into anxieties about social mobility and perhaps even anxieties about automation—though the man works manually, there's a machine-like quality to his posture, the endless toil of the "air breaks." Do you think this piece romanticizes the figure or trivializes him? Curator: The exaggerated features might suggest trivialization, and indeed, this was part of a larger set of joke cards. Yet the image's survival allows for evolving interpretations, including a reading through a more critical lens. It now prompts us to confront questions about exploitation inherent in rapidly industrializing economies. Editor: Indeed, the humor serves a very specific socio-political function. The absurdity of the image defuses anxieties; these images normalized difficult circumstances and subtly propagated the virtues of toiling through adversity, if that makes sense. Curator: It's all about what that image is embedded within culturally, isn't it? Its symbolic power comes from cultural associations, making one pause to think. Editor: Yes, thinking about labor today, it feels almost alien how open the exploitation was in these images...fascinating how symbols shift and reshift their meanings across generations!