Twee vrouwen c. 1679 - 1750

Curator: Ah, there’s something delightfully informal about this little drawing. It's listed as "Twee vrouwen," or "Two Women," made anonymously sometime between 1679 and 1750. Editor: It strikes me as oddly unsettling, even if rendered with a certain levity. The cramped composition and undefined space lend the piece a claustrophobic quality, especially given what seems to be a fraught dynamic between the figures. Curator: Yes, “fraught” feels right. The awkward positioning, the strange weight of the drapery… it’s almost a scene captured mid-argument. Or perhaps a secret shared too loudly. Editor: Indeed, this could very well speak to issues around the surveillance of women, of bodies. Are they permitted privacy even indoors, assuming they're inside, given how stark and barren the setting is? What kind of tensions might be implicit in such forced intimacy? Curator: I love how the pen work hints at depth and form, then seems to just abandon it entirely! Look at the way the lines thicken and thin—almost as if the artist got bored halfway through rendering the fabric. A very human touch, I think. Editor: The linework definitely invokes the hasty character of a sketch, but this very incompleteness is what lends it potency. One can easily transpose onto these women our preconceived biases or contextual assumptions about how female subjects historically were depicted and, importantly, for what purposes. Curator: Which is precisely the appeal, isn’t it? That ambiguity. It becomes a mirror, reflecting back our own anxieties and curiosities about these two women, suspended in time. Editor: Exactly. Perhaps by questioning those inherited readings we are nudged towards considering who these women might really be, separate from an outsider's perspective. That act of reimagining may very well be an activist endeavor in itself. Curator: Well, that certainly puts a new spin on idle sketches. Always something more lurking under the surface, isn't there? Editor: Always, and this unassuming little drawing, to its credit, certainly seems ready to prompt those types of interrogations.