De Wakkere Haan 1797 - 1798

Editor: So, this is "De Wakkere Haan," or "The Wakeful Rooster," from around 1797-1798, by Pieter van Woensel. It looks like a woodcut print. I'm immediately struck by how...alert the rooster seems, its entire body almost vibrating with readiness. What do you make of it? Curator: Ready, yes! It's almost theatrical, isn't it? The rooster isn’t just awake, it’s *announcing* its wakefulness to the entire world. Consider how its posture almost bursts out of this tiny frame! And that bold text underneath... did you happen to catch the translation? Editor: I did! "Like the Wakeful Rooster is inclined to crow / So lead your young youth / to Education’s ways.” So it's a little didactic! Curator: Precisely. Now, what happens if we view it, not as art-for-art's-sake, but as an early version of meme-culture: a clever combination of image and text, meant to convey a fairly straightforward moral. But even a ‘simple’ message can possess deeper resonance, don't you think? The Rooster's defiant crow can become an unexpected emblem of the individual will...What I find beautiful is the combination of that folksy art, and that underlying theme about being who you need to be to make change happen, regardless of constraints! What will the "young youth" reading these words find important here? Editor: That's a thought. It's easy to dismiss something like this as just old-fashioned or simplistic. I see it now – not just as an early form of mass media but also a testament to individual potential. Curator: I’m glad you said that. It is easy to simply relegate this image to "a relic" but once you appreciate that the past and present are inter-twined...a new chapter opens up for this piece, as well!