Selvportræt 1823

Curator: It feels like a memory half-remembered, this portrait. So fragile! Editor: It certainly has a ghostly feel. We're looking at Albert Küchler's self-portrait from 1823. Painted with oil on canvas, it's part of the collection at the SMK, the Statens Museum for Kunst. Curator: Oil paint ages so strangely, it starts to whisper. Look at those fine craquelures on the surface of his face, like lines in a forgotten manuscript, or, even worse, cracks in a death mask. It's so hauntingly intimate, you know? Like you are invading his privacy by staring too much! Editor: The way the materials themselves break down over time is fascinating. It underscores the fact that paint isn't just pigment, it's a binder, it's labor. Somebody prepped that canvas, ground the pigments. We think of romanticism as high-flown emotions, but these portraits came out of very particular modes of production. Curator: Absolutely. And those modes whisper something profound about the era itself. Küchler painted this during a time of great shifts in European consciousness—revolutions brewing everywhere! He’s wearing what I suppose you might call Romantic Casual? Is this guy worried about stuff or is he getting ready to star in La Bohème? I can't tell... Editor: Perhaps both? Romanticism often embraced contradictions. I am also intrigued that in this picture his features and clothing receive somewhat equal detail as well as a monochromatic tone. Does that not signal something new emerging, perhaps a move towards social equality and maybe also that Küchler was really focused on representing himself to his full measure of skill? Curator: It's as if the brush is trying to unearth not just a face but the whole story within it. It gives me the shivers just imagining what this person was experiencing, standing before a mirror attempting to turn his three dimensions into a world of just two... A ghost world where nothing stays and nothing is certain except the passing of time. Editor: That contrast between surface allure and underlying rot –it gets me thinking about art production's inherent tension, between an object and what we might like that object to say or accomplish on its behalf! Curator: An enduring tension for sure, something both very temporal and very mysterious to behold as we consider his work now... Editor: Definitely leaves me wanting to see what kind of canvas we might select to picture ourselves!