Is She Just a Girl with a Cigarette?

by Jerry Morales

She’s tired of her everyday life. The only comfort she feels comes from the nicotine of her cigarette. Her eyes are focused on something. I cannot figure out what. Maybe she’s zoning out. She looks young and old at the same time. Her long figure styled with her mustard shirt, white top, and green pencil skirt display the epitome of youth. However, the fleshy pink clouds surrounding her dark eyes and pale complexion show age and experience caused by time. She encompasses this ugly sensibility that portrays vulnerability and solitude.
Even though it is not conventionally pretty, it is real in the context of day to day life. I know this because I can only recall a feeling of relatability when I took a picture of Moses Soyer’s “Girl with a Cigarette.” I captured it with my iPhone in August at the Portland Art Museum. The image manages to feature the entirety of the painting; however, the upper left corner of its rusted gold frame is cropped out. The girl is relentless and insatiable. She reminds me of Marianne Sheridan, the protagonist of Sally Rooney’s 2018 novel Normal People: an emotionally exhausted young woman who deals with the turbulent transition of adolescence into adulthood.
Her long dark hair was pulled back like it was bothering her. The days of her life are only 12 hours long yet she has to do the same amount of work as everybody else. Like Marianne, the girl Soyer painted makes me feel instantly devastated and inspired. It has to be her countenance. I cannot tell if she feels relieved to have a moment to herself and finally smoke a cigarette. Perhaps she is thinking about what she has to do the moment she has finished her cigarette. Her cigarette represents time, and her face does not allow me to understand what she is thinking. She probably has no interest in showing me what she is thinking. It feels parallel to sitting in a cafe during finals week and having a small cup of tea. Once I finish this cup of tea, I’ll be able to move on to studying the next chapter of the textbook. I could even daydream about how I’ll be a professional writer in ten years until I finish the tea. No one else in the cafe needs to know what I’m thinking. This is my moment, just like Soyer’s girl’s moment with her cigarette. It’s a moment of vulnerability and solitude.
Moses Soyer was a Russian-born American social painter. He was interested in depicting modern life. According to the museum’s curator, the girl is “reflective and distant.” The curator probably meant that the girl was stuck in a train of thought. However, the idea of reflection also makes sense in terms of a mirror. I don’t know what this girl is thinking about, but I know that look. It’s a look of meditation, a moment of relaxation and carelessness or anxiety and productivity. You know that look. When one comes back from work or school, it’s been a long day, and one may sit for a few seconds or minutes. It could be the idea of thinking about what just happened, what there is left to do, or a pause of clarity. It’s not necessarily happy; it’s merely contemplation. As one gets older, this look of reflection becomes a part of what Soyer is interested in, modern life. We get stuck in the loop of a routine and remain lost in our thoughts.
Each time I look at Soyer’s girl, it becomes and feels more familiar. Though I find the colors of the girl’s clothing rather alluring, the girl’s mysterious stare captivates me. It feels like a reminder. Looking at her reminds me of the act of meditation that I do as if it’s an involuntary action. When I look at her, I feel like I’m looking at an image of what others see when I enter this habitual state of wonder and thought. She further reminds me of how tiring it is to be a human being and how there’s never enough time to do everything. Soyer’s girl’s countenance is the face of what it means to be living in modern-day society: to be tired and contemplative. In a world filled with technological illusions and capitalist promises, we become chained to a routine of contempt. Exhaustion substitutes excitement. Dreaming becomes reflection. It’s as if Soyer painted a mirror in 1968 that is still intact today.