Kingfish (Lampris guttatus) after 1581

Curator: Here we have "Kingfish (Lampris guttatus)," a pencil drawing executed by Adriaen Coenen after 1581. What are your initial thoughts? Editor: Well, the fish looks strangely wise. Its eye conveys a sense of melancholy, of deep awareness. It's not just a representation; it feels like a personality. Curator: Precisely. Natural history illustrations of this period served multiple purposes beyond mere identification. This image evokes the medieval "Physiologus," where animals embody moral qualities. Here, we have the fish presented almost as an emblem, pregnant with significance. Fish symbolism throughout time has such powerful ties to fertility, abundance, even resurrection. Editor: I see a tension in this work. The artist aimed for a naturalist style. Yet there's no context, no indication of its environment. Isolated like this, the fish transcends simple categorization, reminding us how marginalized communities and identities are stripped from a rich cultural context to be oppressed. Curator: The meticulous rendering of scales and fins definitely anchors the work in observation, but those faint notes surrounding the image…do you read them as field notes from a naturalist, adding some context, or something more akin to medieval marginalia? Editor: A bit of both, perhaps? It speaks to a period grappling with observation versus established authority, but there's no doubt that Coenen gives prominence to observation by focusing primarily on a physical rendering of the Kingfish. Still, how could the visual representations in sketchbooks such as this one been weaponized as supposed truth in order to legitimize power imbalances of race and class? It feels heavy when contemplating it in the present. Curator: These detailed visual representations provided foundations for a cultural memory of the world, didn't they? They cataloged new possibilities, new sources for meaning... Even the kingfish itself as a symbol is ripe with meaning; royalty but a creature of the ocean depths! It's such a strange contradiction to its name. Editor: And, it’s precisely that tension – between what is observed, and how that observation reinforces or subverts existing power dynamics – that keeps me hooked to artworks like these!