Der Priesterbeamte Nacht 1390 BC

Curator: Editor: Here we have "The Priest Official Nacht," a fresco from around 1390 BC. It's a very striking portrait – I’m immediately drawn to the details of the headdress and the very graphic outlining of the eye. What aspects of this artwork do you find particularly interesting? Curator: For me, the compelling thing here is thinking about the means of its production. This wasn’t created in a vacuum. Think of the labour involved, the specific pigments ground from minerals, perhaps imported from distant lands, the skill needed to apply these pigments to a prepared wall... what social strata are represented, and whose hands were at work? Editor: So you’re saying it’s not just about the image of Nacht himself, but about the materials and labor that went into creating this representation of him. What can the choice of materials tell us? Curator: Precisely! Fresco, for instance – painting directly onto wet plaster – demands speed and precision. The artist can’t afford mistakes. This points to a highly organized workshop, master craftspeople passing down techniques. Each pigment was laborious to get hold of, the expense indicating it’s a mark of power for the elite being represented. Editor: That makes me consider the act of looking very differently, seeing labor imbued in every color. How does this connection to labor affect our understanding of ancient Egyptian society? Curator: The labor here reinforces a system where the elite could commission, control, and own a part of someone's skills for eternity, immortalizing Nacht through an extensive and complex operation of manual, artisanal production. In viewing art, we often focus solely on aesthetics, forgetting about the system and labor that it takes to create such art. What do you think? Editor: I hadn’t considered it in terms of power and control this way. Now I'm more attentive to how much goes into something simple. Curator: And perhaps appreciating that simplicity becomes much more complex as well.