Vase with slightly bulging body 1876 - 1878

Curator: Right, let’s focus on this beautiful piece. It’s a drawing, rendered in ink, watercolor, and pencil, entitled "Vase with slightly bulging body" by James Abbott McNeill Whistler, dating back to between 1876 and 1878. What strikes you most about it? Editor: Its delicate stillness. The almost hushed way the pale blue watercolor pools, hinting at the weight of the ceramic. I imagine it holding dried flowers, their scent long gone but somehow present in the image. Curator: A keen observation. The materials are central here. It shows Whistler's obsession with Japonisme at this time; this artistic trend really permeated elite crafting circles, and the way Whistler chooses to depict this vase through such delicate rendering makes us think about value assigned to labor itself. Editor: True! It feels deeply considered in its making, but there’s also a touch of melancholy, don't you think? Perhaps it is his own Western interpretation of "Eastern" culture—Whistler almost mourns its loss to him. Look at the little blossom design floating freely off to the side... unanchored to its origin. Curator: Yes, you touch on the way Whistler played with presentation and perspective, both aesthetic choices but born out of access. Also the way he carefully, consciously crafts our experience of something… purchased. It does not present the real toil it took to craft such ceramics in the first place. Editor: It almost begs a political question – how do you display the human cost to "fine" or "tasteful" possessions. Does art allow us the excuse to fetishize production, or is it possible to reveal the labor? I almost want to touch the drawing and feel if I can sense it there! Curator: And Whistler dances around that line, doesn't he? This is less portraiture and more meditation on design. These glimpses into a material culture filtered through Western consumption are fraught with implication, of course, a story behind every ceramic mark that the work dances around exploring. Editor: Definitely. It all brings to mind those porcelain stories, those histories imbued in vessels—tales as precious, in a way, as the very craft on display. Thanks to this beautiful "drawing of a vase" to conjure that memory again!