Fotoreproductie van een prent naar een schilderij door Johann Heinrich Füssli, voorstellend een scene uit Koning Lear door William Shakespeare before 1864

Editor: This is a photogravure of a print of a painting by Johann Heinrich Füssli, dating from before 1864. It depicts a scene from Shakespeare’s King Lear. It’s printed in a book, actually open to the title page. The image itself looks pretty intense and dramatic…all dark shadows and wild gestures. What jumps out at you? Curator: What I see here is, perhaps, the performance of grief. Note how Füssli channels the sublime in the faces of those gathered - madness is almost like looking into a fractured mirror of the human condition itself. I keep wanting to ask myself, 'Where does the staged suffering end, and the authentic experience of Lear's heartbreak begin? Is it possible that it does begin?’. Think on how the artist uses the print medium here, not merely to reproduce, but to reinterpret and refract a deeper pathos from the heart of the story. Does this darker presentation shift your understanding of Lear? Editor: Absolutely, seeing it in the context of a book— almost like a stage set captured mid-performance — makes me think more about how deliberate those dramatic poses are. Is Füssli pointing out the performative nature of grief, rather than the grief itself? Curator: It makes me think...are we not all, in our private theaters, both the players and the audience to our own sorrows? Consider also how the limitations of a printed reproduction contribute - that compression of light and shadow. Maybe it strips away the veneer to reveal some truth otherwise concealed! What will you carry forward? Editor: I will definitely keep an eye out for these kinds of theatrical interpretations! I've always viewed these scenes more passively before. Curator: Remember art challenges what we assume...to make us really "see."