Jug c. 1936

Curator: Immediately, I’m struck by how delicate it is; almost ethereally light, despite being a commonplace jug. Editor: Indeed. We're looking at "Jug," a watercolor and drawing work created around 1936 by Yolande Delasser. The subject is simple: a glass jug, rendered with remarkable transparency. But that transparency begs to question what sort of person decides to paint an item like a jug and why? What does it mean that she decides this as subject matter and not something else? Curator: It's tempting to see it as a pure exercise in form, wouldn't you say? The artist emphasizes line and shape with subtle gradations in watercolor washes. The shadows suggest an awareness of light and shadow play across the curves of the vessel. I wonder whether its the jug on display in the context of some political matter? Editor: Possibly, yet there's a contemplative quiet to it. Think about the time it was created – the late 1930s. What did it represent at that time? An every day jug feels more important in an economy that could be doing well and be making one think that this object means so much more. I am almost moved at such detail in portraying the form of a jug. Curator: True. And I can not see something extraordinary by the portrayal. If the lines are considered, Delasser's lines really draw the form of the jug but never allow the glass jug to escape. There's always that feeling it will fade in and out of vision; what the jug is, how can one really grab its intention? Editor: So in your estimation the art transcends what you had originally understood, its role as simply an object. But as this fades in and out, I want to draw on it, to consider its existence and being. As a final point I'm just taken by such ordinary subject matter and how it speaks of this object, in an indirect manner. Curator: Yes, a simple object, imbued with social, economic, and perhaps personal meaning that might allow us to ponder upon it.