Priceless Oil
c. 1925
Designer
Henri de Laurencin
DIMENSIONS
63 x 48 in. (160 x 121.9 cm)
OBJECT NUMBER
PH.9641
COUNTRY OF ORIGIN
France
CREDIT LINE
Poster House Permanent Collection
KEYWORDS
Fuel, Man, Native American, Oil, Product

This early 20th-century advertisement for oil transforms Indigenous identity into corporate conquest. The visual conceit is not unique, however, as it echoes George Ford’s 1893 “Cover the Earth” logo for Sherwin-Williams showing a paint can pouring red paint over the globe. The French text here promises eternal youth for engines: “Motorists! Here is Priceless-Oil. Use it!…and your engines will always be young.” Created as the Osage Nation was experiencing unprecedented oil wealth—and the systematic murder of its people by corporate profiteers and private individuals for their oil rights—points to the global obsession with the Indigenous American connection to this natural resource. The Native figure is both conqueror and conquered: he wields an axe while serving as a corporate avatar, pouring petroleum across continents he does not possess. This casting positions Indigenous peoples as willing agents of the industries that were orchestrating the extraction of Native resources, destroying their environment, their lives, and their livelihoods. The Art Deco style of this design wraps ecological destruction in an aspirational aesthetic, selling not just motor oil but also a lifestyle defined by endless consumption. By harnessing Native imagery to glorify petroleum as actual Native people were being killed for oil wealth, Laurencin’s design epitomizes the keystone of extractive marketing: the use of those most harmed by industrial progress to sell its promise of a modern future.

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