Salvador, from Flags of All Nations, Series 2 (N10) for Allen & Ginter Cigarettes Brands 1890

Curator: Here we have “Salvador, from Flags of All Nations, Series 2 (N10) for Allen & Ginter Cigarettes Brands,” a print made around 1890, currently in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The scene is dominated by the flag of El Salvador above a golden landscape, complete with erupting volcanoes in the background. Editor: Well, it's…certainly vibrant! The color palette, combined with the composition, gives it an almost unsettling, dreamlike quality. There is something ominous about that quaint flag. Curator: Tell me more about the flag itself; its symbolism. We have white stars on a red field in the canton and alternating stripes of blue and white in the fly, a stylized depiction of the El Salvador flag, seemingly conflating elements from the U.S. flag too. But there is this whole context, I mean...this was for cigarettes! The implications of glorifying nationhood through a commercial, and let's be real, addictive product? Editor: Precisely. The whole series functions as propaganda, really. It presents a sanitized view of these countries, literally glossing over complex colonial histories and economic realities, using nationhood to sell consumption. Curator: Right, there’s that odd contrast of national pride, industrial commercialism and colonial ambition—a sort of Gilded Age synthesis, distilled onto this tiny piece of paper. If you remove all the background information and contextual realities, you still get that intense interplay between flatness and depth from the flag blowing. Note also the interesting choice of using watercolor to soften the edges of each form. What would that evoke? Editor: Something about the watercolor perhaps humanizes or idealizes; softens the blatant capitalist drive that lurks behind the composition’s design. Curator: I'm left contemplating what the flag stands for here, beyond simply the nation of El Salvador. The commercial and imperial agenda and what this conflation says about how we view national identity. Editor: Indeed, a potent little rectangle concealing much larger power dynamics and the aesthetics that seek to obfuscate those forces.