Uitvindingen 1850 - 1881

Curator: Let's turn our attention now to this 19th-century lithograph, "Uitvindingen," which translates to "Inventions." The piece, housed here at the Rijksmuseum, comes to us from the hand of Dirk Wijbrand Tollenaar. Editor: Well, my first thought is that it feels like looking through a playful, if somewhat idealized, window into a time of tremendous, almost innocent, excitement about technology. It’s quaint and charming, really. Curator: In terms of material culture, it is quite remarkable how this work combines various modes of visual representation - a collage of distinct prints arranged together, not unlike the production and organization principles behind 19th-century periodicals or instruction manuals. Think about it – how would images circulate? How would they educate and entertain? Editor: I'm drawn to the way it presents progress. Each vignette, though simple, speaks to this grand narrative of human ingenuity. There’s a telegraph, a nautical contraption, what looks like a sort of floating house... each one tells a small story about human capacity for making, adapting, building a future. It’s utopian. Curator: Perhaps. But notice the detail in the renderings—especially given this medium. Lithography allowed for the relatively cheap reproduction of images and, by implication, afforded art that many would otherwise not be able to possess. This "Prenten-Magazijn," published by D. Noothoven van Goor, essentially democratizes art and information simultaneously. Editor: You are absolutely right! It speaks to art as information—and, moreover, art’s instructional function. I get the feeling of leafing through something between a children's primer and the scrapbook of a visionary—totally enchanting. It almost feels like childhood ambition immortalized in ink and paper. Curator: Thinking about Tollenaar's decision to showcase “inventions” gives one pause. Here we witness an early chapter of our modern-day entanglement with machines—perhaps both the anxieties and wonders thereof? It’s quite relevant, wouldn’t you say? Editor: I'll leave here thinking about progress: its allure and how it reflects what we most believe about ourselves at a given moment in history. Curator: And how that’s always imprinted on the materiality that makes us.