Stående mandlig model 1901 - 1905

Editor: This is Oluf Hartmann's "Standing Male Model" from around 1901-1905. It's a charcoal drawing and very classical, almost academic in its style. I am struck by the sort of vulnerable but assertive pose – what’s your take on it? Curator: Vulnerable, assertive...yes, like a secret handshake with your own mortality, isn't it? The gaze, directed just off-canvas, that soft charcoal outlining every plane... Hartmann teases a space for contemplation here. Makes me wonder what dreams that young man carried and what became of them. Editor: The details seem carefully studied, right? How would this piece have been used in its time? Curator: Undoubtedly part of an academic practice, a way of dissecting the ideal human form with charcoal instead of scalpels. You feel that restraint, don’t you? An artist learning and, through learning, feeling out the borderlands between skill and raw expression. He is exploring the nature of perception through representation, guided and perhaps restricted by academic conventions. Editor: So, this wasn't necessarily intended as a finished piece? Curator: Perhaps not. Or maybe it was... Finished only when we allow it to spark something within us. Think of all that unseen potential, a butterfly pinned to a board awaiting some miraculous transformation… It only needs you to make something new. Editor: It’s amazing to think about it like that – I've really gotten new thoughts on what art can mean, thank you! Curator: Art's like a hall of mirrors. The more we look, the more we'll see our reflections in unexpected places, or others' insights might help make a mosaic of the soul.