Plate One from The Supreme Current Fashion c. 1805

Editor: Here we have Pierre Nolasque Bergeret's "Plate One from The Supreme Current Fashion," created around 1805. It's a lithograph, with drawing and color pencil additions, printed on paper. The figures are quite comical! What should we make of this exaggerated style? Curator: This lithograph offers a fascinating glimpse into the material culture and consumption patterns of the era. The use of colored pencil on top of lithography – consider the layering, the deliberate addition of pigment – it's revealing about artistic labor and the evolving means of production at the time. Notice how the printmaking process allows for a relatively wide distribution, impacting social trends by making fashion accessible in reproduced format. Editor: So, the *means* of making it are as important as *what* it depicts? Curator: Precisely! It’s not just about documenting elite fashion, it’s also a piece of evidence concerning the increasingly commercial nature of taste and social identity. Caricature, as we see here, challenges existing high-low art distinctions; how it democratized art as a social and political commentary delivered through printed materials is central to understanding the piece. Consider its potential impact on how people consumed fashion in relation to class distinctions! Editor: So, by distributing satirical images of the fashionable, the artist democratized fashion, or at least commentary on fashion, via accessible media like lithography and prints? Curator: Exactly! And we shouldn’t ignore the social critique embedded within the image. It serves as a record of social posturing and a commentary on the excesses and absurdities of fashionable society, readily available at the marketplace. What does it mean for these individuals and their makers when these images of fashion enter popular consumption through mass-produced prints like this? Editor: I never thought about a lithograph holding so much material and cultural information! Thanks. Curator: My pleasure! Remember to examine beyond the image, into the social landscape it occupied.