Yankee, from Types of Nationalities (N240) issued by Kinney Bros. 1890

Editor: Here we have "Yankee, from Types of Nationalities" created around 1890 by the Kinney Brothers Tobacco Company. It looks like a print, maybe a drawing? It strikes me as odd, a very direct, almost unsettling gaze, but with strangely soft coloring. What jumps out at you? Curator: The initial observation regarding the "soft coloring" provides an avenue for formalist interpretation. Note how the chromatic range is deliberately limited. This controlled palette reinforces the two-dimensionality of the image. Further, consider the composition; the figure is presented frontally, disrupting any potential for narrative depth and foregrounding, instead, surface qualities. Editor: Surface qualities like what? The rosy cheeks? The mustache? Curator: Precisely. These elements operate as signs. We can consider the work as a structured system of signs, focusing less on historical context and more on internal relationships of form. For example, the rigid text contrasts starkly with the organic roundness of the figure's face. Do you perceive any further contrasts or tensions within this structured visual field? Editor: Well, the text seems to praise the 'Yankee' ideal, but the caricature suggests satire, doesn't it? It's not exactly reverential. So there's a visual tension. Curator: Yes, excellent. You're articulating a structural opposition inherent in the image. Formal analysis encourages close reading of such oppositions and the resulting disjunctions, absent needing extrinsic information. What we are considering here are formal relations. Editor: This approach really forces a viewer to slow down and examine the relationship between each mark on the paper! I guess that's important when these things are mass produced to sell tobacco. Curator: Exactly. Approaching visual culture with these conceptual frameworks can be revealing!