Pedestal 18th century

Curator: Oh, I love the pale, ethereal feel of this little pedestal. It's from the 18th century and you can find it in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It gives me the sensation that it contains delicate long forgotten letters written on vellum. What does it trigger for you? Editor: I see material aspiration trying its best! All those dainty white figures trapped against the Wedgwood blue ceramic—it speaks of eighteenth-century consumerism trying to gussy itself up in Neoclassical respectability. Curator: Respectability perhaps, but doesn't it also hint at longing? I feel an attempt to touch something grander, like a whispered conversation with antiquity. Editor: The aspiration to antiquity comes down to class. Think about the labour involved: crafting ceramic and imbuing the material with these precise details to replicate these classical stories. It’s about commodity production geared to those who could afford refined leisure. Curator: I suppose... But those figures have stories too! Each scene whispers of a different world, one panel hinting at motherhood, another maybe at lament. Look, I agree that the mode of making does define the intention but consider, too, its success in communicating intimate emotions. Editor: That 'success' relied on very specific manufacturing and marketing processes. I think it would be overly romantic to say it expresses feelings rather than performs a social function for a particular clientele. How radical can those “whispers” really be in that context? Curator: I suppose the feelings were as mass produced as the porcelain! But maybe a genuine emotion hides, or echoes there somewhere— even commodified art carries the trace of its creation in the mind and hand. Editor: Exactly, that hand belongs to a system. Appreciate the hand and appreciate the larger machine that puts it in service, shall we say. Curator: Yes, precisely. In trying to be grand, in referencing classical sculpture, this pedestal speaks, more loudly perhaps, about labor and class, in that striving. I now see its contradictions as part of the intention. Thanks for this. Editor: And thank you for that brief peek into its aspirational world, I appreciate your sensitive reading as always.