Side Chair 1935 - 1942

Curator: Ah, this takes me back. I remember my grandmother had chairs that looked almost identical. Editor: Indeed. What we have here is a study titled "Side Chair" created sometime between 1935 and 1942 by Gilbert Sackerman, rendered with watercolor, pencil, and charcoal. Its charm, though subtle, hints at a larger dialogue about function and status. Curator: Charm is the word! It's like a shy gentleman, all straight posture and quiet details. Did they make a whole set, I wonder? It's got a beautiful formal feel to it. Almost makes me want to sit up straighter just looking at it. Editor: Precisely. While unassuming, these studies of decorative arts objects, even functional pieces like this chair, reflect how objects became symbols, embedded in complex narratives of social aspiration and middle-class identity. Sackerman transforms the everyday into the emblematic. Curator: Do you think Sackerman had the average middle class citizen in mind when designing? He could just have easily been trying to conjure up a memory of nobility. Or perhaps he was thinking about theater and thrones...It certainly could work in stage design. Editor: I imagine it’s both, and neither, in the sense that it taps into something universally recognized as aspirational and comfortable. It reflects on art's complex engagement with public desires during the interwar period when this study was made. Its academic execution style brings the chair, something usually only functional and pedestrian, into the higher art spaces. Curator: Makes you question, too, whether the intention was even that deep to begin with. Is a chair just a chair after all? The artist certainly thought about shadows and shapes and the unique materials of pencil, charcoal and watercolor brought out, and, in that case, does it need a socio-historical reasoning? It's really quite a puzzle. Editor: It is indeed. Thank you, it was a very illuminating, or should I say, *chair*-ifying reflection? Curator: Haha! Likewise, these things we do for art.