Plantestudie 1906 - 1910

Curator: This is Niels Larsen Stevns's "Plantestudie," created between 1906 and 1910, and currently held at the SMK, Statens Museum for Kunst. Editor: I'm struck by its immediate fragility. The thin lines of ink against the paper, they feel like a fleeting impression, as though these plants might disappear in the next gust of wind. Curator: Indeed. It speaks to the influence of Impressionism and naturalism, but I also see nods to Art Nouveau in the organic forms and decorative linework. Larsen Stevns seemed deeply engaged in revealing a continuity of natural expression through symbolic form. Editor: Do you think that focus aligns with broader cultural anxieties about industrialization? Looking for something untouched amidst all that concrete, or trying to preserve what seemed doomed. Curator: It certainly resonates. Symbolically, the plant is perennial, constantly re-emerging. Plant studies connect to centuries of attempts to map and know the natural world, part of an effort to understand a divine and knowable order. This act of observation becomes one of conservation, spiritually and perhaps even politically. Editor: Right. Especially during that period. What resonates most is the sketch-like quality. There's something radical in valuing this rough record over some perfected, polished rendering. The visible process speaks to ideas around change and revolution. Curator: Interesting you mention the ‘rough record’, that choice seems more deliberate than accidental. Larsen Stevns seemed more interested in invoking an interior feeling, of communicating the sensation of being within nature. In a psychological way. The seemingly unfinished quality leaves space for contemplation and allows us to enter the scene. Editor: Ultimately, art captures a moment in history. And seeing nature through that historical lens only heightens my interest in these simple forms, rendered with such immediacy. Curator: It's almost as if Stevns has shown us nature not as it *is*, but as we *feel* it to be.