Morning Mood: Sleeping Gentleman with Top Hat 1921

Editor: Lesser Ury’s “Morning Mood: Sleeping Gentleman with Top Hat,” is a small etching. I’m struck by the texture created by the etching process. What can we learn from the materials and process used here? Curator: Consider the social context that made this etching possible. Etching allowed for relatively easy reproduction, feeding a growing market for affordable art amongst the burgeoning middle class. This contrasts with the top hat, a symbol of bourgeois respectability and perhaps, overexertion. Editor: So, the medium allowed for wider consumption, even of images critiquing that very consumer culture? Curator: Precisely. The act of reproducing this image democratizes it, ironically circulating it amongst those it may subtly critique. It prompts us to consider the means by which art participates in, and comments on, the social fabric. Editor: I never considered how the reproduction process itself could be part of the commentary! Curator: Exactly. It's about the labor, the material, and its movement through society.