Dimensions: height 133 mm, width 191 mm
Copyright: Rijks Museum: Open Domain
Curator: Let's consider Arnoud Schaepkens's drawing "Rotspartij," made sometime between 1855 and 1904. It’s an ink drawing. Editor: Oh, my! What a flurry of scratches. It gives the impression of an intimate chaos, a close-up of unkempt wildness, like sticking your nose right into the undergrowth and feeling lost. Curator: It's interesting that you pick up on chaos. It feels almost manic, but is there an attempt to symbolize order or nature's architecture? The style reminds me of realism with the attempt to accurately portray. Editor: Well, realism is about the world as we perceive it, right? This perspective seems not of grand vistas or carefully framed scenery but something more immediate and unsettling. Maybe this disorder reveals that "accurate" perception of wild nature entails recognizing its chaotic soul. Is there some cultural meaning, in this dark palette and agitated lines, something more profound? Curator: Perhaps it's not so much an invitation to get lost but a deliberate demonstration of how wild and untamed spaces hold intrinsic cultural importance. Perhaps Schaepkens aimed to capture more than just scenery. What is your reading of landscape artworks? Editor: Landscape speaks volumes to the people of a period. It reveals collective longing, shared anxieties... Here, I think the focus on texture and tangled shapes shows a symbolic anxiety about a nature overwhelming or concealing, devouring itself in shadows and growth. A dense world that borders on sublime dread. Curator: I love that idea: "sublime dread!" The way the lines mimic roots digging into the earth, and how these patterns emerge is interesting. To see this is to see the tension between wanting control over nature and acknowledging its uncontrollable force. Editor: And yet, maybe there's also an ecological premonition here... These frantic, consuming lines might echo, now, the dire feeling of environmental struggle; a reminder that imbalance has very old symbolic and visual languages that Schaepkens was on to. Curator: What a haunting yet powerful thought. We started seeing wildness and chaos and got to the climate crises... "Rotspartij" seems, after all, more meaningful now than it has ever been.
Be the first to comment and join the conversation on the ultimate creative platform.