Jakob brydes med englen? 1900 - 1905

Curator: This drawing, likely created between 1900 and 1905, is by the Swedish artist Karl Isakson. Titled "Jacob Wrestling with the Angel?", it resides here at the SMK, Statens Museum for Kunst. Editor: My initial feeling? A dance on the edge of darkness, almost a violent tenderness. Look at the furious, scribbled lines. You can sense the intense struggle, yet also this strange… intimacy? Curator: Absolutely, it's that charged tension. You see the materiality, the simple graphite on paper allowing for this amazing sense of movement. Isakson wrestled, too, I suspect – with faith, with form – during its creation. You feel like he almost allows the paper's "ground" to define space, like the figures are arising out of material potential, not only rendered in the charcoal's immediate, forceful reality. Editor: And it's just that - charcoal’s reality, on brown paper! The very act of mark-making is visible. The material almost embodies that rawness, it's not refined or pristine; it’s earthy, like the biblical story itself, of labor and persistence. Not to sound too flippant, but does anyone consider this 'work' within the total arc of what made up Isakson's day? The struggle for him and the wrestle for Jacob feel intertwined. Curator: Oh, fascinating! Because I look at it and imagine the wrestling is as much internal as external; is Jacob battling an angel, or himself? You can almost feel the vulnerability beneath all the apparent aggression, don't you think? I suppose, in both respects, you ask yourself as the artist how the toil changes or affects its potential. Editor: Absolutely, but by choosing humble materials—paper, graphite—and foregrounding their use, Isakson's underscoring something beyond any mythic narrative; art making, is a material and earthly process itself and perhaps his way into something spiritual? Curator: Maybe the limitations are the gateway. Like using a limited palette can open a broader emotional range, don’t you find? Well, what a remarkable glimpse this drawing gives us, into faith and artistic creation intertwined! Editor: Right, seeing how physical, how very *present*, a so-called divine wrestling match could be, shown plainly with only paper, pencil, and time!