Yeezy sneakers, crocodile skin bags, and Ferraris — before the status symbols of our day, there were… square cattle. The “innovations” in the early 1800s of selective breeding and new feeding practices created a competitive culture of prize cattle among British farm owners. These farmers flaunted their prized possessions in paintings depicting squat, fattened, and almost blocky-looking livestock — or, one could say, pre-packaged units of meat. 

A Pair of Pigs is one such painting. Familiar now to many internet users as the meme Bröther, may I have some öats, it was already a “meme” in its time: a typology that propagated and reinforced a certain shared pride amongst breeders. To transform living beings into products — “live” “stock” in the true sense of the word — with unprecedented efficiency, oats became feed and feed became slop, nebulous units that eliminate any undue attention directed towards the process of foraging and consuming. Perhaps it is not so surprising that this pair of pigs, almost interchangeable to one another, are so square - they stand as tanks in the chain of metabolism that links slop to animal, one species of animal to another, and at the end, a hazy promise of prosperity.