Loenersloot 1890 - 1926

Editor: Here we have "Loenersloot," an etching by Johannes Josseaud created sometime between 1890 and 1926. It’s a Dutch landscape, and it has such a pensive, almost somber mood. What's your read on this piece? Curator: As a materialist, my attention is immediately drawn to the process of etching itself. The controlled application of acid, the laborious scratching into the plate… These are not just techniques, but material realities. Think about the workshop setting, the division of labor that might have been involved. What statements about material reality does the artist create? Editor: So you see the etching process itself as a key element, a way to access the cultural context. Can you explain how that laborious method links to the broader economic or social conditions of the time? Curator: Absolutely. The late 19th and early 20th centuries saw industrialization rapidly changing production, with increasing separation from nature. But hand-worked crafts like etching represented an alternative production method, valuing skilled labor and unique, material outputs, resisting standardization. How might the image of the windmill play into those tensions? Editor: That makes sense. It’s like the artist is presenting a romantic vision of pre-industrial labor while also engaging with the very modern process of printmaking, creating multiple originals instead of a single one of a kind piece. Does the widespread consumption of prints offer new contexts of class, production and material for artistic production? Curator: Precisely! Considering how Josseaud employed those material means allows us to see this etching less as just a quaint landscape and more as an artifact embedded in complex economic and cultural realities. Editor: I never thought about printmaking in that way, as a material act with a specific meaning. That's really opened my eyes!