Tall Clock c. 1938

Editor: This watercolor drawing, called "Tall Clock," was made around 1938 by Arthur Johnson. The realism and detail are pretty striking, but something about rendering such a manufactured object in watercolor feels unexpected. What stands out to you about it? Curator: Well, let's start with the material reality. It's a drawing of a clock, right? But it’s also *made* of something: paper, pigment, water. Think about the labor involved – the drafting, the careful application of watercolor washes to mimic the grain of the wood. It speaks to a level of craft often dismissed as "decorative," but central to daily life and its organization of work. Editor: I hadn’t thought about the work *behind* the work. So, by depicting a clock in watercolor, the artist is sort of elevating, or at least drawing attention to, overlooked labor? Curator: Precisely. Consider the cultural context of 1938. Mass production was changing how objects were made and consumed. Handmade clocks, or representations of them, take on a different meaning. How does depicting this handmade process contrast to, say, the assembly line? Editor: It’s like the drawing is slowing things down, giving us time to consider the object’s origin, the labor, the materiality. It does push against this divide between "high art" watercolor and everyday functional objects like clocks. What did people back then make of this combination? Curator: It’s difficult to know the exact reception, but my sense is the drawing acts as a marker of the complex relationship of labor to object making as time changes what materials are readily available. How time is crafted for both its beauty and industrial purpose. Editor: I’m definitely looking at this clock in a new way. Seeing beyond the pretty details to understand the whole history of its creation and representation is really compelling. Curator: And how consumption shifts art’s relevance, from art object to artifact. It’s all in there, isn’t it?