Meadow Lark, from the Birds of America series (N37) for Allen & Ginter Cigarettes 1888

Curator: What a charming image! This is "Meadow Lark, from the Birds of America series (N37) for Allen & Ginter Cigarettes," dating back to 1888. It’s currently held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The artwork is composed using a color pencil print. Editor: It does possess a strange appeal. I’m immediately struck by its miniature size, the muted color palette, and how the image is broken into distinct panels. There’s almost a stage-like quality to its composition. Curator: Absolutely. The separation you noticed is part of what gives it a kind of flat, graphic quality, typical of the Japonisme style that was so fashionable during the late 19th century. Consider the material reality, it’s a chromolithograph trade card produced for mass distribution within cigarette packs! These weren't meant to be fine art, but rather promotional items. Editor: So, while it resembles art, it actually functions as capitalist ephemera meant to create consumers. That tension, its simultaneous aesthetic quality and promotional purpose, makes it such an intriguing document of its time. We’re meant to appreciate not just nature, but consumerism’s grip on nature. Curator: Precisely! And look closer: each panel offers different visual information - the bird, flora, and landscape -- inviting contemplation about natural resources used in this industrialized time period in relation to the commodification of luxury products, in this case tobacco. Editor: Looking at that landscape element, it certainly recalls ukiyo-e prints in the layering and sense of depth created. This little card is saturated with ideas circulating about cultural and racial hierarchies—the East's sophisticated art, commodified by Western companies through exploited land, animal, and human labor. Curator: I agree. In its design and function, we see the confluence of labor, marketing, and the aesthetics that appeal to the burgeoning consumer culture of the time. This innocuous cigarette card reveals quite a complicated network. Editor: I'm glad we spent time discussing this piece. The fact that this unassuming little cigarette card can provoke conversation on so many issues says something important about looking more critically. Curator: I agree wholeheartedly. It is also another reminder to challenge those old established boundaries between commercial arts and fine art.