Berglandschap met beek en onweerslucht 1852 - 1855

Editor: Here we have Alexandre Calame’s "Mountain Landscape with Stream and Storm Clouds," an etching made sometime between 1852 and 1855. There’s such drama in the sky! It’s almost biblical, and so brooding. What stands out to you when you look at this print? Curator: What strikes me is how Calame utilizes a traditionally reproductive medium like etching, something meant to disseminate imagery, to convey such a subjective and, as you noted, dramatic vision of nature. We often associate Romanticism with the sublime, but here, are we seeing an attempt to democratize access to that feeling? To make the awe of the mountains accessible beyond the aristocratic Grand Tour? Editor: That's interesting – almost like mass-producing feelings! So, you think this choice of printmaking democratizes access to art and feeling itself? Curator: Precisely! Consider the role of prints in circulating ideas and images in the mid-19th century. Etchings like this would have brought the experience of the Alps into middle-class homes, shaping their understanding of nature and perhaps even national identity, especially for the Swiss. What do you think is missing when a painting, the traditional 'high' art medium, is not selected here? Editor: Well, paintings would be more precious and individualized, less reproducible, and therefore harder to access, and with a print there is perhaps some loss of…grandeur? The texture, the size, the ‘aura,’ so to speak. Curator: Exactly. That ‘aura’, as Walter Benjamin would call it, is deliberately sacrificed for wider reach. Perhaps Calame is commenting on what, or who, truly holds value when documenting the natural world: the few elite who can see a grand painting, or the many who see prints such as these? Editor: So, beyond just a pretty landscape, this print reflects questions about who gets to experience art and nature and in what form. Thanks! I didn’t expect so much from a landscape etching! Curator: Indeed. And isn't that the magic of art history? To reveal the layers of meaning embedded within seemingly simple images.