The Painter Edvard Weie 1906 - 1910

Marius Hammann created this portrait bust of the painter Edvard Weie, but we don't know exactly when. I wonder what it was like to make this. The bronze has these really visible tool marks, and you can see how the artist shaped the wet clay with their hands, and the kind of pressure they exerted. Maybe Hammann was really getting to know Weie, his face, the way his hair curled. The light makes the skin seem so alive. I keep thinking about the little bowtie, which looks kind of lumpy and awkward. Maybe Hammann was trying to capture something about Weie's personality that wasn't immediately obvious. Like, here’s a man trying to look fancy, but maybe he’s not so fancy after all? I always love those moments in art when you get a glimpse of something real, something human, behind the surface. It makes you wonder about your own relationship to the world. The ways we see and know and feel. Artists are always talking to each other, across time, inspiring each other.