Threshing c. 1930

Editor: Okay, next up is Minnetta Good's "Threshing" from around 1930, a drawing rendered in graphite and charcoal. I’m immediately struck by how monumental it feels, even though it’s a print, like some sort of rural engine of progress… or maybe oppression? It's complicated. What do you see in this piece? Curator: "Monumental oppression"—I love that. You’ve hit on something key there, a kind of beauty and brutality intertwined. I feel a powerful ambivalence here. See how Good renders the scene with almost loving detail, yet the activity itself, the threshing, is laborious, repetitive? The almost dreamlike quality of the charcoal, the ghostly figures… it’s as if we're glimpsing a memory, or a premonition, heavy with the weight of the past. It is almost surreal in quality... Don't you think? Editor: Surreal in a way that feels utterly grounded, yes. I mean, these are real people doing real work. But the hazy rendering makes it almost mythical, less a specific place and more of an… idea. What does this suggest to you? Curator: Well, maybe that’s the crux of it. It invites us to consider the romanticism of rural labor versus its harsh reality. Perhaps Good is suggesting the timeless nature of this struggle, a cycle of work and harvest that transcends a single time or place, using those figures as more elemental forms, ciphers even. You can feel both the nostalgia and the burden, all at once. Does it change how you see it now? Editor: Absolutely. I was so caught up in the initial visual impact, I didn't fully appreciate the tension she creates between the idyllic and the grinding. Thank you for that observation! Curator: It was my pleasure!