Italienske okser. Popeji 1904

Curator: Let’s turn our attention to a work called "Italienske okser. Popeji," or "Italian Oxen. Pompeii," rendered in 1904 by Peter Hansen. It’s a watercolor and drawing piece currently residing here at the SMK. What's your initial take on this deceptively simple work? Editor: Hauntingly delicate, wouldn't you say? The emptiness around the oxen evokes the desolate expanse of Pompeii itself – a place frozen in time by a cataclysmic event. It’s less a celebration of rural life, and more a quiet acknowledgment of vanished civilizations. The wispy, unfinished oxen add a ghostly feeling, a testament to fleeting existence. Curator: I see the potency of place permeating your reading. Oxen, traditionally symbols of labor, servitude, and agrarian society take on an added significance given Hansen's title. Rome harnessed this power, and you have to consider that it has now vanished beneath ash, like a memory. The ethereal unfinished quality adds to the visual semiotics of disappearance and transient grandeur. Editor: Exactly! And look how Hansen leaves the initial sketch so bare, deliberately revealing his process! These phantom-like sketches almost feel more ‘real’ than the two finished subjects. You also cannot avoid confronting ideas of sacrifice, too, historically, with those formidable horns. I am reminded of old bull-leaping rituals in Bronze Age Crete, yet here these mighty animals look tame, resigned...almost melancholic, resigned to being mere workers. Curator: Melancholy is a strong, apt description. The artist doesn't celebrate their brute strength or potential power, he offers up something tender; these creatures exist caught between usefulness, history, landscape, memory and their own physicality. There's a complexity that transcends the initial simplicity of the scene. Editor: Well said! This journey through fleeting images and enduring symbols reveals more depth with each step back and glance anew, prompting reflections on human history. Curator: Precisely, a deceptively powerful little piece brimming with symbolism. One of the advantages of the artwork lies in the fusion between real and abstract; the memory blends seamlessly with the factual representation.