Dagbog. Side 67 1843

Curator: Looking at this drawing, what springs to mind first for you? Editor: Melancholy. The script sprawls across the page, and yet there's something so personal, so intimate about encountering these old handwritten words. What exactly are we looking at here? Curator: This is “Dagbog. Side 67,” or “Diary. Page 67,” a drawing by Johan Thomas Lundbye from 1843. It's ink on paper and it is located here at the SMK, the National Gallery of Denmark. Editor: Ink, yes, that's fascinating. I'm immediately drawn to the means of its production: the physical act of writing, the type of pen, the pressure applied. Paper itself was a valuable commodity, wasn’t it? Curator: It was, particularly then. Beyond the pure materiality, however, the writing is rich with symbol and reference. He even closes it with “Happy New Year, Johan” followed by, “End, now a penitent tear”. The handwriting itself could be read as symbolic, suggesting a sense of unease within a rapidly changing world. The visual weight of the script conveys profound introspection. Editor: Exactly, we see here evidence of labor. He must have spent a great deal of time with that diary. Curator: We certainly do. Notice, if you will, that on the lower left there is some form of accounting with an associated series of calculations, potentially receipts or supplies. Editor: I like that, high art alongside accounting. Curator: Precisely, as this helps collapse the idea that artists somehow are magically exempt from the business aspects of making art. The consumption and expenditure related to being an artist is as much of the artist’s world as their ideas are. Editor: So true. Thinking about it more broadly, this journal gives access to what seems like intimate experience. We, as the audience, consume that privacy, making Lundbye, or figures like him, symbols of creative genius, laboring with ideas. Curator: Very insightful. I hadn't considered it that way. What a powerful convergence of intimacy and craft. Editor: A great intersection. I am forever seeing consumption, whether ink on paper or the very stories and characters they might depict. Curator: Absolutely, and that completes this exploration. Thank you!