Zoar Four-Post Bed c. 1937

Curator: So, we’re looking at "Zoar Four-Post Bed", a watercolor and drawing made around 1937 by Fritz Boehmer. Editor: My first thought is...restful. There’s a gentle quality to the light and color. It almost makes me want to climb right in. Curator: It is quite inviting, isn't it? The drawing’s architectural, precise, but the watercolor adds softness. Beds like these were important in the Zoar community. The Zoarites were a German Separatist group that practiced communal living. These four-post beds were not merely furniture, but cultural artifacts, reflections of Zoar’s commitment to simple living. Editor: I see. So, what does choosing to portray a bed say about values? A place of rest, dreams, but also, perhaps, intimacy denied? Curator: Exactly. It touches on those community beliefs. These beds would have been uniformly made, adhering to the group’s principles of equality. No one Zoarite had a more luxurious or comfortable bed than another. Boehmer’s choice to isolate this object, stripped of a domestic interior, also throws it into stark relief as an emblem of their societal ideals. Editor: Interesting that the artist is so attentive to the materiality of the bed while presenting it as an idea, an emblem of a community. Curator: I’d say that tension is part of the drawing’s power, even now. We're looking at something quite ordinary, rendered with careful strokes. Editor: It makes one reflect on the politics of domestic life in the 1930s as well. You know, it occurs to me how revolutionary the choice to focus on communal, rather than individual, life was and still is. Even down to the details of bedposts. Curator: Well, the clarity and calm precision, paradoxically makes me restless. Editor: See? Sleep isn't always sleep. Thank you.