De boomwol 1894 - 1959

Curator: Welcome to the Rijksmuseum. Here we have "De boomwol," a print dating roughly from 1894 to 1959, artist Gordinne. It details the cotton production process, from plant to product. Editor: Immediately striking is the almost storyboard-like layout. The composition is sectioned into smaller scenes, giving a fragmented narrative feel. Curator: Precisely. Each vignette offers a key stage. We move from the cotton harvest, depicted with racial stereotyping, to carding and spinning and onto dyeing and sales. It’s a holistic view. Editor: It screams of the industrial revolution, this systematized exploitation of resources and labor. Look at the carding scene: the mechanization and raw material fill almost the whole image. Curator: Indeed, the rhythmic linearity achieved from stage to stage creates a visual structure. Consider how Gordinne contrasts the open fields with the confined factory space. The perspective here is crucial. Editor: For me, the heavy emphasis on material transformation becomes the central theme. How raw plant becomes usable fabric in its myriad transformations. From the labor-intensive harvest to the machines to a finished product. Curator: I also find the implied consumerism quite interesting in these later frames. There’s the distinct look of luxury in the details around shopping. Editor: What that creates is the ultimate distance from the hands-on processes at its foundation, where it is made, how it's made. What a statement on the distancing effect of industrialism from primary resources. Curator: That tension between nature, industry and commerce feels key to deciphering this unusual pictorial. I appreciate how it marries the pictorial to the process. Editor: I agree. Reflecting on this work, I am struck most by how its graphic style encapsulates both colonialist enterprise and budding capitalist system, displayed on what seems like an instruction sheet of manufacture.