Scheiding 1788

Curator: Looking at "Scheiding," a print created by Daniel Nikolaus Chodowiecki in 1788, housed right here at the Rijksmuseum. It seems simple at first glance, a drawing. Editor: Yes, immediately I feel this... this sense of polite grief. Almost a formal resignation. There are two adjacent drawings showing a separation, like two sides of a broken coin. The figures are arranged formally, yes, but there is deep-felt humanity here, as well, not devoid of some degree of raw emotionality. Curator: Raw, even? The etching and engraving work speaks to a very calculated process. Notice the emphasis on line; so precise and clean, giving it a Neo-Classical edge. Editor: I agree the precision feels Neo-Classical but it still lands for me in this kind of Romantic sphere, no? It reminds me of mourning rituals where there is almost a performance of sadness expected. I keep thinking of all the copper that would need to have been sourced for the creation of the plate alone; the labor it takes to make prints—there's nothing light about the production process. Curator: It really asks us to consider this tension between private feelings and public presentation during that time. A domestic drama depicted through a highly refined medium. Look at how even in separating people, there's a controlled composition. I see it reflected not only in the work itself, but in its historic context as a depiction of middle-class lives. Editor: And it is this medium -- accessible printed imagery -- that delivers personal dramas like this into the homes and hands of an expanding audience. In the work, the act of physically moving one from the presence of another is almost brutal in it's finality. The lines serve as constraints that bind people to these historical, ritualized, performances of emotion. And while there might be a degree of remove, those constraints speak of powerful economic underpinnings. Curator: Well said. Ultimately, I'm drawn back to the restrained execution juxtaposed against the undercurrent of human experience and emotion that we discussed today. It offers much in terms of the emotional nuances that the act of physically drawing on copper provides the capacity to express Editor: And for me, how art serves as a reflection, not just of social norms but of the hands and resources it takes to present them in physical form, on view at any scale.