The Remedies of the Maids c. 19th century

Curator: Oh, the sheer agony captured in Daumier's lithograph, "The Remedies of the Maids"! It’s at the Harvard Art Museums. Editor: Agony is right! Look at the poor fellow, practically pinned down while these...matrons go to work. You can almost feel the pressure, the cold instruments. What barbaric materials were used? Curator: Well, it's more a commentary on social pretension, the quackery of the era, than a literal procedure. I mean, just look at the wild exaggeration in their faces! Editor: Still, there's something so viscerally unsettling about how manual it all is. The printmaking process mirroring the forceful intervention depicted. It’s a critique of both the "remedy" and the societal conditions that enable it. Curator: True. And Daumier's masterful use of line heightens the tension. Each scratch seems to deepen the subject's distress and expose the absurdity of it all. Editor: Absolutely. It lays bare the labor, the material processes of both the practice and the print, and how one reflects the other. Curator: It makes you wince, doesn’t it? Editor: Indeed. It reminds me how often we prefer the illusion of control over real healing, in both art and life.