Gammel Mand med Turban 1733 - 1816

Editor: So here we have *Old Man with Turban*, made sometime between 1733 and 1816 by W.A. Müller. It's an engraving, which gives it this incredible level of detail, but also a certain starkness. What's your take on this intense portrait? Curator: Ah, the gaze! It really pierces you, doesn't it? The starkness you mention, I feel it too, like a stripping away of pretense. You know, I find myself wondering about the man behind that turban. It is W.A. Müller looking back at himself? The intensity suggests such intimacy, the type you only have for yourself. Editor: So, you see it as possibly a self-portrait then? That explains a lot of that intimacy, maybe? Curator: Perhaps. Or perhaps it is what an artist intuits looking at the raw vulnerability in all people and wanting to see into your own being through it. But look at how he uses light and shadow - there is very little in the image's construction offering depth. Yet Müller pulls it off in the feeling that emanates off this man! What do you feel the turban adds, for example? Editor: The turban is interesting...it suggests an exoticism or perhaps a kind of romanticism. Not something you always see. It elevates it. Curator: Yes! It takes this very real figure, this potentially honest representation, and places him in something more - perhaps, a story. As the artist shares it with us, we participate in the weaving of its creation. Editor: That makes me look at it a whole new way. All those narratives and possible lives in just one image. Thanks, I never considered that. Curator: You are most welcome! That, my friend, is the enchantment of art. Isn't it marvelous?