Toren met kantelen en een poort after 1854

Curator: This drawing by Johannes Tavenraat, simply titled "Tower with Battlements and a Gate," was created sometime after 1854. It’s pencil on paper, currently residing here at the Rijksmuseum. Editor: It's a beautiful, skeletal thing. A mere suggestion of a tower. There’s something almost hauntingly incomplete about it. Like a half-remembered dream of fortifications. Curator: Haunting, yes, I agree. It almost feels like peering into the artist's preliminary thoughts. Look closely at the rough quality of the pencil strokes, especially in the depiction of what I think might be an animal. It underscores this raw, nascent quality. I wonder if we’re seeing a commentary on the nature of creative labor. Editor: And what kind of labour built the thing he is depicting? The materiality speaks volumes about pre-industrial architecture. Consider the craft, the masonry, the sheer manpower required to construct those battlements, those very means of production speak to their society. I’d be interested in how the paper, the pencil he used connect with those forms of building. Curator: I hadn’t thought of the relationship in quite those terms, but it absolutely makes sense. Perhaps there’s a tension being explored, a dialogue between ephemeral artistic thought and the tangible, enduring nature of architecture itself. What do you make of the inclusion of the deer in this? Does it look more organic than the depiction of the man-made fortress? Editor: I’m immediately drawn to it, contrasting that crisp geometric intention on display in the gate and that tiny triangle on the page with a looser almost emotional hand that crafted the deer, or maybe crafted what appears to be antlers that may well disguise it. Are we really sure that is a deer? I think his uncertainty with how to form the animal opens a much more intuitive response than the crisp precision to line the tower. I wonder if he finds solace and perhaps greater opportunity to demonstrate his labor in rendering a buck and its antlers than he does in mapping out plans. Curator: Fascinating point. The gate feels rigid and prescribed while the deer adds an element of untamed freedom to it, wildness perhaps? Incomplete like you pointed out and inviting imagination of greater freedom as it runs with imagination itself. What if he wanted his mind set free rather than bound to rendering walls and defense tactics, battlements and architectural precision. Perhaps the deer here isn’t about the structure’s ability to repel forces. Editor: Beautifully said! This image makes you consider just how buildings function within their economic structure; a raw sketch offers new perspectives into Tavenraat's wider social context and engagement with materials that make up structures like the gate as opposed to merely how the battlements operate functionally. Curator: Exactly! It goes to show how even an ostensibly simple drawing, like this pencil sketch from Johannes Tavenraat, can lead to really deep conversations. Editor: Definitely! It proves that, in examining what makes art, there’s as much a record in the economic background of a single drawing tool that opens us up to far greater worlds beyond its surface than meets the eye, even in pencil line.