Call You Up Sometime, Redbook illustration 1956

Editor: So, here we have Edwin Georgi's "Call You Up Sometime," an illustration he did for Redbook in 1956, made with oil paint. It's got this very dreamy, soft-focus quality to it. She almost looks like she's just stepped out of a magazine ad… or a memory. What strikes you about this piece? Curator: Memory is the right word, I think. It hits you, doesn't it, with a wave of…nostalgia? And something deeper too, a kind of... vulnerability, laid bare. I see a whole era distilled here. The hopeful, consumerist post-war world seen through rose-tinted, or perhaps slightly blurry, glasses. Is it truly the intimate scene of the subject just 'letting go' for a moment, or something entirely contrived? Editor: Nostalgia for sure. She almost seems aware of being looked at, posing, yet there is this strange authenticity there that grabs you. Curator: Precisely! And those bare feet...such a casual detail yet provocative when one really considers this idealized moment frozen in time. Consider it - this woman isn't *caught* unaware, she's offered herself up for viewing. This reminds me of Berthe Morisot! Don't you see hints of impressionism in his way of capturing light, color, atmosphere, rather than details? Editor: Now that you mention it, I see that too. Curator: It is as though she has captured lightning in a bottle to pour out onto the painting! I think the artist would like it very much if she was given a second chance at capturing time. Editor: So much going on in one illustration. Curator: Indeed, each glance holds new layers and invites us to peek through windows in time. I wonder how many similar portraits now forgotten hang hidden in houses just waiting to breathe.