Campaign Salt Ad

1994

oil on canvas

56 x 68 inches

Consuming Suzette

By Tracy Bredow

1993

But who is this, what thing of sea or land?

1. The Morton Salt Umbrella Girl, born to dress and hairstyled in 1911; mass-produced endearment.
Mass-consumed innocence into the psyche, woman as commodity. 
Updated in 1921, 1933, 1941, 1956 and 1968.

Female of sex it seems,

That so bedecked, ornate and gay

Comes this way sailing

2. The surrogate, a body of work to illustrate the narrative.  This muse of capitalism presides over the union of procreation and production; two joined in the narrowest sense dilutes the bond.

Like a stately ship

Of Tarsus, bound for the isles

Of Javan or Gadere,

3. The value of salt to life; solarium argentum from money to food.  Also used in the manufacture of gasoline, pharmaceuticals, plastics, paints, dyes, tires, detergents, and insecticides.

With all her bravery on, and tackle trim,

4. The first written reference to salt is found in the Book of Job, recorded about 2,250 years before Christ.
Later, in the New Testament, Matthew wrote:
Ye are the salt of the earth; but if the salt have lost his saviour, wherewith shall it be salted?   5:13

Sails filled and steamers waving

Courted by all the winds that hold then play;

5. The fertile nature of salt has no literal representation.
Turn to advertising, and the young striding girl bereft of sexuality, impregnates salt with a marketability unsurpassed by few other unions.

And calm of mind, all passion spent.

Chore

Haagen Dazs

Reproduction

Lamb White Days

Hollywood’s Waste

Agitate

Campaign Salt Ad

Vacant Mankind