Cigar Store Indian c. 1938

Editor: This is Walter Hochstrasser's "Cigar Store Indian," from around 1938. It looks like it's a drawing, maybe watercolor and charcoal. I'm really struck by the…the theatricality of it. The figure feels so staged, so deliberately "Indian." What's your take on this piece? Curator: Staged is the perfect word! There’s a performative element baked right into the subject matter. Those cigar store figures weren’t exactly known for their anthropological accuracy. It's like Hochstrasser is taking a second bite at a stereotype already past its prime. Editor: So, he’s commenting on the…the commercialization, the commodification of Indigenous identity? Curator: Perhaps, or maybe just fascinated by it. The colors are muted, almost melancholic, wouldn’t you agree? And the rendering, particularly the way the light hits the figure… it’s all so precise, almost lovingly so. It invites me to contemplate how stereotypes, however demeaning, are not fixed. Editor: Do you think he meant to reclaim the image somehow? Or at least humanize it? Curator: Humanize… I am not entirely convinced about it! The details are too careful, too intent on replicating a preconceived notion, and what I think is truly moving in the artist work, it is also really terrible... What do you see instead? Editor: Hmmm, interesting point, but isn't art is always stuck in the middle like that: great AND terrible at the same time! I guess it makes the conversation better. Curator: It surely does. Let us meet here again soon, shall we?