Flask 1935 - 1942

Curator: This drawing, simply titled "Flask," was created anonymously sometime between 1935 and 1942, rendered in oil paint and drawing. Editor: It's…surprisingly lustrous for what appears to be an image of an old liquor bottle. Almost has a faux-archaic, alchemical vibe. Curator: Considering its likely creation during the latter years of the Depression and leading up to WWII, its iconography seems deeply rooted in an almost nationalistic pride tied to agriculture and industry. There is even another flask with the Baltimore Battle Monument embossed onto its face. Editor: "Corn for the World." Right? Is that... the sort of subtle, almost tongue-in-cheek self-awareness of an American agrarian ideal that will soon become radically altered with globalization? Curator: It can be interpreted that way, absolutely. I find the visual rhetoric here fascinating, especially when considered alongside the historical events unfolding simultaneously. It's as if these flasks embody both the self-reliance of American identity and also foreshadow coming change. The style echoes realism, doesn’t it? Editor: Very much so! Though there is almost a sense of surrealness to these... idealized flasks. Something about how their form has been emphasized gives it an almost promotional sort of quality, rather than simply illustrating real items. Like it belongs on a whiskey label. Or, like I said, from an alchemist. Maybe they saw booze as the future? Curator: Alcohol held varying symbolic positions across that period—escapism, commerce, even medicinal purposes. I am tempted to say the flasks become receptacles for these narratives... Editor: A lot like the corn it has advertised, there’s a sort of… potential embedded within them, like seeds in the soil. These feel less like illustrations, and more like containers of meaning... like relics unearthed from the basements of American history. Curator: Well put, my friend. Relics that make us pause and consider, even decades later, the liquid that helped shape society. Editor: Indeed. And also, whether the flasks ever managed to live up to all the promise embossed upon their surface.