Skitser af flyvende fugle 1864 - 1941

This page of sketches of flying birds was made by Niels Larsen Stevns, and it's now at the SMK. Look at these light, quick marks, almost like the birds themselves have taken flight from the page. You can imagine Stevns outside somewhere, watching birds flit about. It's like he is trying to capture their very essence on the page. The pencil feels like an extension of his own movements, capturing the fleeting gestures of these birds in mid-air. I wonder if Stevns ever felt like he was chasing something, trying to capture the ephemeral nature of life and movement. Like, as a painter, you're always trying to pin down these elusive things that are always changing and moving. Maybe this piece was an investigation into the poetics of flight? It makes me think of Cy Twombly, or even cave paintings. It's that immediate, like sketching is an act of trying to understand something by drawing it... Artists are always borrowing and discovering from each other across time, which means that no artwork is ever truly finished.