Stone, St. Louis, American League, from the White Border series (T206) for the American Tobacco Company 1909 - 1911

This little cardboard portrait of Stone, the St. Louis baseball player, was created by the American Tobacco Company, and it’s funny to think about how cigarettes and baseball were once so intertwined. The approach to making this image feels very process-driven, almost like a proto-Pop Art screenprint. Looking closely, you can see that it’s all about the layering of colors. The gray of his uniform is built up from tiny dots, creating a kind of optical texture. The bright blue background is the same, like a field of pure color made from something more granular. The letters ‘STL’ are bold and graphic, anchoring the image and bringing a real sense of place, to this particular moment in baseball history. The whole thing feels like a precursor to the work of someone like Gerhard Richter, who also plays with mechanical reproduction and blurred imagery. It's all about the conversation between art, commerce, and culture.