Curatorial notes
Curator: This woodcut, created around 1527 by the artist known only as Monogrammist LIW, is entitled "Kinderkruistocht," or "Children's Crusade." It's a busy scene. Editor: Chaotic is the word that springs to mind. It feels almost like a Boschian nightmare compressed into black and white. So many figures, and the execution scene looks pretty horrific. Curator: Precisely! Look closely at the details, the way the artist uses the medium itself. A woodcut is labor-intensive; the cutting, the printing… the whole thing speaks to a particular era of production. Remember that during the Northern Renaissance, printmaking was a relatively new and powerful technology. It’s democratizing images. Editor: That’s right. A skilled printmaker like LIW had to be attuned to the way the chisel interacted with the woodblock to create his figures. The physical labor itself informed the message and image. This definitely gives a new meaning to craftsmanship, especially in the way the narrative depicts children enacting an act of gruesome, ritualistic destruction. It also emphasizes how it portrays violence almost as spectacle for political or religious ends, as the children’s crusade historically relates to the broader theme of religious fanaticism, obedience, and the vulnerability of youth, issues that resonate today as well. Curator: There’s also an allegorical dimension that cannot be understated, I think. Look at the text above; it sets up the woodcut as a commentary, perhaps about the power—or perceived purity—of youth. And I suppose there's a visual pleasure to the intricacy and horror it exhibits simultaneously. Editor: I can’t deny that the sheer amount of labour put into this print intrigues me. But at the end of the day, I leave contemplating the labor that led to its creation versus what it visually communicated as being totally divergent from my core set of ethical beliefs. Curator: An uneasy dissonance, then. Editor: Exactly.