Vaas met meerminnen 1768

Curator: At first glance, I see something ornate and almost whimsical. Is it an elaborate dessert dish for gods? Editor: We’re looking at "Vase with Mermaids," an etching and engraving from 1768 by Jacques Juillet, held here at the Rijksmuseum. Curator: Mermaids, you say? Oh, I see them now! The handles! That explains the dreamy, aquatic feel it has. Though mermaids feel…almost too cliché. Is that terrible to admit? Editor: Cliché is precisely where we often find ourselves, recycling old oppressive visual cultures to make sense of current oppressive contexts. The mermaid, as a trope, as an icon—she signifies desire, the monstrous feminine, but also lost seafarers. Here, they frame a highly patriarchal symbol, the vessel, holding what? Curator: Tears, maybe? Or maybe hopes for a future we keep fantasizing about, that’s always out of reach, like, well, a mermaid! Look how everything flows upward and outwards, a real fountain of design! Editor: True, though, speaking historically, it seems Juillet might have been riffing off existing architectural elements popular at the time – ornate fountains and decorative flourishes in formal gardens. I think the mermaids could also indicate the power structures inherent to maritime culture— navigators, traders, pirates. How do these figures, as ornaments, reflect colonial ambitions? Curator: Colonial ambitions decorating... a fancy sugar bowl! The irony, or perhaps the audacity, is rather potent, isn’t it? But what is it about the sepia tone, and the light touch? It feels like a fragile dream. Editor: The delicate rendering gives it a drawing-room delicacy, a world away from the brutal reality it implicitly references, I suppose, we keep returning to the way it feels like a beautiful deception. It makes me reflect on how the visual language of power always refines its violence into decorative form. Curator: I’ll not be able to view decorative art the same ever again. Thank you! Editor: The ocean's depths hold a multitude of stories beyond enchanting song, yes.