The Magic Lantern 1854

Curator: The overall effect is…bleakly charming? Editor: Charmingly bleak, I'd say! Look at Gavarni's “The Magic Lantern,” a lithograph from 1854 currently residing here at the Art Institute of Chicago. Immediately, I see the weight of this wanderer's trade depicted through masterful shading—but at what cost does he carry it? Curator: Ah, yes, that magic lantern strapped to his back – part entertainment, part burden. It’s as though he carries the flickering light of stories into a world determined to stay gray. Isn’t there a bittersweet humor in that? The lonely showman against the windswept landscape. Editor: It begs the question – where's he headed, and for whom is he performing? Given that it's a lithograph, let's not forget the material process here: each print a copy from an original image drawn on stone. The magic lantern reproduces images, as does the medium of lithography. Curator: Copy, echo, reflection… It's almost a riddle in an image. Like life holding a mirror to art and then asking, "Are you entertained?" I think this Romantic-era landscape and his lone figure capture a peculiar sadness; the itinerant artist carrying not just equipment, but also an ideal. Editor: Precisely! Consider the labour – both his physical toil and the intellectual property represented by those lantern slides. The cost of providing ephemeral spectacle in a rapidly industrializing world... We rarely consider the labor, material reality, and expense to fuel escapism for audiences, or how these technologies for creating images shift cultural awareness and modes of perception. Curator: True, but there’s a beauty in that grit, don’t you think? Perhaps that weight grounds him, makes the stories he tells all the more valuable. Makes the momentary escape all the more poignant. After all, doesn't our imagination require the reality against which to stretch and play? Editor: I agree it is poignant! Seeing it framed that way helps clarify its power to represent larger cultural shifts. Now I wonder what magic that lantern could possibly produce... Curator: Just enough, I suspect, to momentarily illuminate the soul. Editor: And perhaps to throw the realities of industrializing Paris into sharp relief. I’ll be thinking about how images were made and received.