Lazarus' opvækkelse 1671 - 1738

Curator: I see something very haunting in this rendering by Hendrik Krock, I can almost smell damp earth and incense. Editor: Indeed, let’s consider Hendrik Krock’s drawing titled "Lazarus' opvækkelse," placing its creation somewhere between 1671 and 1738. Primarily executed in pen and ink on paper, it’s currently housed at the SMK, the Statens Museum for Kunst. One notes immediately the economical use of materials, stark lines defining figures emerging from what appears like layered shading. What strikes me is the baroque preoccupation with capturing highly emotional states through relatively cheap supplies – emphasizing accessibility through affordability, you see? Curator: Yes, the accessibility speaks volumes – imagine the stories these modest materials were meant to convey, almost whispering their narratives into being! I wonder about Krock's choice of such earthly mediums to depict something so explicitly supernatural. There’s almost a devotional quality embedded in the drawing’s construction; the resurrection rendered via labor and material… Editor: Absolutely, there is a dialectic interplay at work. The medium informs the message – humble tools articulating grand religious concepts. Think of the socio-political landscape then: How does art serve propaganda? This drawing would circulate; prints would be made available; Lazarus resurrected, thus asserting power – material transformation equated with societal impact. Curator: Thinking of how this might have appeared at the time to ordinary eyes gives me goosebumps. But more viscerally, for me it conjures ideas of light. Light as a form of material transformation, but light captured in the stark contrasts Krock manages so economically... He's coaxing luminosity out of literal darkness and line! It's quietly miraculous! Editor: Precisely! The manipulation of the most basic of media creates narrative impact. Consider its influence – each drawn line propagates ideological viewpoints. Each mass reproduction – lithographs and subsequent impressions—embeds social authority, linking to networks of distribution, marketplaces, even empires that relied upon the ready access to and subsequent dissemination of art objects... Curator: So much more to unearth than just Lazarus from his tomb, I see. Krock's Lazarus lives on, doesn’t he, in the layered meanings we build upon this relatively simple, though quite affecting artwork. Editor: An artistic legacy in every visible trace of ink on paper – art, propaganda, economics; indelibly intertwined!