De blauwe teil 1907

Editor: Here we have Léon Spilliaert's "The Blue Tub," created around 1907 using charcoal and watercolor. It's surprisingly simple, just a blue tub, but there’s something melancholic and even a bit unsettling about it. The heavy shadow amplifies that feeling. How do you interpret this work? Curator: It’s the power of the void, isn't it? The tub, an empty vessel, immediately invites a wealth of symbolic associations. Water, cleansing, birth, but here… it's absent. Spilliaert plays on that expectation. What emotional weight does absence carry for you, seeing this stark image? Editor: I see that… the absence makes it feel incomplete. It makes me think of the things we expect to be there but aren’t. It becomes more about loss, almost. Curator: Exactly. Think about the Symbolist movement Spilliaert was involved in. They were deeply invested in exploring the unseen, the psychological. This tub isn't just a tub; it's a container for our anxieties, our unspoken fears. Notice how the shadow almost dwarfs the object itself. Editor: So the shadow represents something else that’s unsaid? Something bigger than just where the light isn't reaching? Curator: Precisely. It could symbolize the unconscious, the unknown aspects of ourselves or our society. Consider the formal qualities—the circular form, the cool palette. Do those echo any cultural symbols or meanings? Editor: Circular forms often represent wholeness, but with that harsh shadow, any sense of wholeness feels broken or disrupted here. It feels more like isolation and the cool colors only adds to it. Curator: Yes, and the choice of a tub is interesting too; is it being used, ready to be filled? What does a humble object elevated through art evoke for you about the symbolism embedded in everyday items? Editor: This has completely shifted how I see it. I had only seen it as a basic tub, now I see there's complex interplay of absence and suggestion making it an unsettling but also powerful image. Curator: Precisely, art invites to us to unpack even the simplest image with history, psychology and symbolic meaning, that it is so powerful.