“The Commuters” from Love Through the Ages for The Tavern Club (fragment)

Edgar Miller
1934
Oil on board
L 57, W 39 cm

In 1934, Edgar Miller was commissioned by his friends at The Tavern Club to execute the mural "Love Through the Ages" in their main dining room. The mural’s subject matter was to be loosely based off of a mural Miller made for the Architects Ball of 1932 at the Drake Hotel, depicting historical figures ironically making fun of their status as famous (or infamous) lovers.

Miller resurrected the theme for The Tavern Club to mixed reviews from local art critics, but the piece was always beloved by the club’s members. “The Commuters” section of the Love Through the Ages murals was not painted in reference to any well-known story or fable, but appears to have been a commentary on modern-day celebrity and the tabloid stories told about the rich and famous. This painting borrows styles from other famous muralists and contemporaries of Miller, most notably the work of Diego Rivera.

The everyday scene shows a crowded train car, with the commuters mostly reading their newspapers, featuring articles with titillating headlines including, “Gold Digger Bumps Off Suitor” and “Love Life of Garbo”. In fact, notes found in one of Miller’s sketchbooks indicates that these were real headlines he was pulling out of the National Enquirer (or similar tabloid) of the day.

This fragment came towards the end of the entire mural’s full narrative progression spanning human history back to the Stone Age. This depiction of everyday people going about their business in "modern times" during the 1930s helps to land the self-referential, tongue-in-cheek message of the whole piece: that gossip will always be concerned with the various stories that take place behind closed bedroom doors, much to our collective chagrin.