Looking Out For Number 1 / A Taking Man, from the Jokes series (N118) issued by Duke Sons & Co. to promote Honest Long Cut Tobacco 1890 - 1893

Editor: Here we have "Looking Out For Number 1/A Taking Man," a print drawing with watercolor by W. Duke Sons & Co., sometime between 1890 and 1893. It looks like an advertisement card. There's something strange about the composition, all these little scenes squished together. What do you see when you look at this piece? Curator: Indeed. Note the sharp delineation of space. We can appreciate how each scene is self-contained, almost like individual building blocks in a larger structure. The print, framed in red, plays with positive and negative space, leading the eye around the plane. The men are placed with very elongated heads and faces, the style leans toward caricature. Are you finding it effective? Editor: Well, the scenes don't really relate to each other. And I find the shoe in the upper-right distracting. It all feels very arbitrary. Curator: Agreed, there is little depth in the arrangement, flattening perspective, even eschewing traditional proportion. But is this flatness a flaw? Or might it reflect a burgeoning shift towards modern art's emphasis on the picture plane itself? Look, the use of watercolor to establish a clear division between blocks creates contrast. Does that help you? Editor: I can see the contrast. So the format itself, with its disjointed and compressed space, is trying to break from traditional modes of representation? I hadn’t thought of it that way before. Curator: Precisely. Instead of striving for illusionistic depth, it seems interested in calling attention to its own artifice, its constructed nature, creating a sort of playful visual language for commerce. Editor: Okay, I think I’m getting a better sense of this card’s artistic strategies, even if it’s promoting tobacco. Thank you. Curator: You are welcome. Considering its surface qualities prompts us to engage critically with its visual message.