Untitled (Mozart Profile to Viewer's Left - Pink Background) 1945

Editor: Here we have Joseph Solman’s “Untitled (Mozart Profile to Viewer's Left - Pink Background)” from 1945. It's a modernist print, perhaps a watercolor lithograph judging by the textures and layering of color. There's a starkness to the lines and how the profile emerges from this soft pink haze... almost like an apparition. What jumps out to you when you look at it? Curator: I see a meditation on the means of artistic production during wartime. Look at the seemingly crude, almost hasty application of watercolor; rationing might have forced Solman to make the most of limited materials. Editor: That's interesting; I hadn't thought about material constraints affecting the aesthetic! Curator: Exactly! This aesthetic wasn’t always a choice. Furthermore, consider the choice of Mozart. While ostensibly a portrait, it's rendered in a manner that obscures individual detail, suggesting perhaps a collective, universal experience rather than a celebration of individual genius. Editor: So, you're saying the simplification and stylization point to broader socio-political undercurrents? Curator: Precisely. The commodification of Mozart’s image and music should also be considered here. Solman might be responding to the consumption of culture itself. Think about who owned such a print in 1945, and how that act of possession played into class structures and ideas about art. Is Solman complicit in or critical of such transactions, by selling images of art for purchase? Editor: So it’s less about idealizing Mozart and more about questioning the artistic labor involved in creating this print and also the accessibility of Mozart's image to the masses... Thank you, I see it differently now! Curator: My pleasure. Paying attention to materiality opens up the world to labor relations.