Cliffs with a Waterfall at Tivoli 

Editor: So this drawing, "Cliffs with a Waterfall at Tivoli," is by Claude Thiénon. It's a pencil drawing, and there's a haunting kind of beauty to it. It’s a stark and unfinished feel in the bottom. What grabs you when you look at this, something you've seen perhaps? Curator: The initial unfinished aspect immediately pulls me in, the almost sketched-out feeling of the water below—it allows your mind to complete the image. Doesn't it feel as though you're standing there, observing the landscape yourself and breathing the air? I imagine that what’s below is not really a body of water but an unreal feeling. What do you think, am I crazy here? Editor: Not at all! I feel like I'm holding my breath, kind of scared. You mentioned breathing, which made me focus on the cliffs, and that tiny structure teetering on the edge… It almost feels like a dream. What does it suggest about how Thiénon saw the relationship between humanity and nature, would you say? Curator: That teetering building is our anchoring place and allows me to see his own questioning. Maybe he found the sublime here—the dangerous but majestic place between humanity’s attempts at domination, versus its relative insignificance. We have all that stacked into this one place, you feel? It has some anxiety. The pencil seems just right as a medium because you can smudge. This drawing really comes from a place of experience for the artist. He knows exactly what is the anxiety, that's a talent to put it down in just a couple strokes of graphite. Editor: The 'smudged anxiety’ of graphite – I love that! That completely reframes the drawing for me, making me see beyond just the landscape. It’s like the feeling becomes the subject. Curator: Exactly, my friend, and it also makes me rethink my travel plans. Maybe stick to the manicured gardens!