Sheet with overall pattern of squares and dots 1800 - 1900

Curator: Standing before us is a “Sheet with overall pattern of squares and dots," an anonymous print and drawing from between 1800 and 1900, now residing here at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. What's grabbing you right away? Editor: Oh, it's whispering "textile" to me! It’s got that vintage wallpaper vibe—you know, the kind you’d find peeling off the walls in your eccentric aunt’s attic. I almost want to reach out and feel the paper, see if it has that old, comforting papery texture. Curator: Your response connects to ideas around "pattern and decoration," a movement resisting the minimalist, austere leanings of some modern art by reasserting ornament and beauty, often embracing materials and processes deemed 'craft' rather than 'high art'. It also complicates ideas around the anonymity, particularly as craft and labor, specifically the labor of women, was frequently rendered invisible. Editor: Interesting! I was immediately struck by the repetitive nature. Almost hypnotic. I wonder what someone might have been thinking about while creating each tiny square and dot? Or did this sort of thing just spill out unconsciously as a sort of release of tensions? Curator: Considering gender and labor within the broader context, we have to think about whose work this might have been and under what circumstances the "craft" might have been made. If this artist—or perhaps craftsperson—was responding to larger forces that regulated their identities. We might ask whether the repetition, as you said, allows a kind of catharsis, or if it merely enforces social expectations of the "woman's work." Editor: A little from column A, a little from column B perhaps? What feels subversive to me, perhaps, is that something created out of that "repetition compulsion," from domestic expectations, found its way into a place like the Met, subverting its own anonymity to shout "I EXIST!" Curator: Absolutely, your thoughts resonate with debates regarding craft, gender, and value still pertinent today. That sense of "I EXIST" certainly gives this simple artwork a powerful and necessary charge. Editor: Well, now I am really thinking about my aunt’s wallpaper... This piece gave me so much to chew on! Thank you for this artful rendezvous. Curator: My pleasure, indeed it does speak volumes if we give it a chance to question ourselves and the world around us.