Friends 

This is Zoe Mozert’s painting, "Friends". Although undated, it was likely produced in the United States in the 1930s or 40s. Mozert was a prolific pin-up artist whose work celebrated a certain kind of idealized feminine beauty, and it’s important to understand the socio-economic context of this kind of imagery. These pictures were largely made for, and consumed by, men, and they speak to the rise of consumerism and a particular kind of fantasy life enabled by new forms of mass media. Here, Mozert depicts a woman and a horse in close proximity. Both figures are objects of beauty; the horse a symbol of power and freedom, the woman a celebration of delicate femininity. But what does it mean to bring these two objects together in a painting? What kind of relationship is being represented, and what kind of desires does it speak to? To understand this further, one could research the circulation of pin-up art in America at this time, and the complex relationships between gender, commerce, and representation.