By Request 1935 - 1943

Curator: We're looking at "By Request" by Charles L. Sallee, Jr., made sometime between 1935 and 1943. It's an etching, a kind of print, currently held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Editor: My immediate impression is of enclosed gossip. There's a density created by the tightly packed figures, particularly the two in hats leaning in towards each other. The textures, created by all those fine lines, makes it feel secretive, somehow. Curator: That sense of enclosure, I think, stems partly from the historical moment. Etchings were widely popular in the interwar years as affordable art, reflecting a broader sense of democratic accessibility. These scenes of everyday life felt familiar. The "request" in the title points to that—a personalized exchange, a secret shared among a select few. Editor: Yes, it is the composition, the interplay of light and dark that pulls me in first. The figures are modeled with an almost obsessive detail, given the medium, while the background has far less depth. Curator: Precisely. The details, from the almost identical hats to the determined way the pianist strikes the keys, hint at roles being played. What are they whispering? What kind of performance is taking place, for whom? It speaks to our constant interpretation of social cues, of figuring out the hidden script of social interaction. Editor: The artist is drawing our eye to those questions through tonal variation, playing shadow and light expertly, especially on the speaker’s arm and shoulder, while the light falling upon their faces feels unnaturalistic. A dramatic, directed focus is drawn. Curator: The contrast in their body language reinforces it, doesn’t it? The musician absorbed in her playing and those conspiratorial figures... Sallee is holding up a mirror to our own assumptions about appearances, and even complicity. Are we eavesdroppers? Editor: Sallee really has teased so much emotion and psychology from a relatively simple composition, rendered in black and white. A striking snapshot of interpersonal dynamics. Curator: Indeed, an insight into a moment of social intrigue. It is both intriguing and deeply familiar.