Study sheet_ deer 

Curator: Here we have a “Study sheet_ deer” by Johann Erdmann Gottlieb Prestel currently residing at the Städel Museum. The medium appears to be pencil on paper. Editor: Mmm, ethereal! Like glimpsing ghosts in a forest. There's a delicate lightness to these sketches, almost as if the artist was trying to capture the very essence of deer-ness rather than their solid forms. Curator: It certainly highlights Prestel's engagement with the natural world, typical of the landscapes favoured during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. You see here how a humble material such as paper becomes not merely a surface, but a site of knowledge production. Editor: Exactly. It's like the deer are emerging directly from the page itself, tentative and shy. I love how incomplete some of the sketches are, hinting at the rapid-fire process of observing and recording movement. A raw sort of creation! Curator: Raw is a great term, and it brings me to consider this work as labour. Think about the process; paper production, pencils made, all the while Prestel dedicating time for observation, learning to render the animal in a convincing way. Then it might act as preliminary designs for a more ambitious final work. The network of human and non-human labor is all connected to bring forth something that captures our attention even today. Editor: And perhaps Prestel just liked drawing deer. The joy of the artist is hard at work there, a light kind of play between his hand, his pencil and the deers, creating this echo through the pencil marks, to transmit an inner wilderness, where every thought feels alive! Curator: And what is remarkable is how those economic processes produce cultural values that get represented over and over, informing taste. These seemingly modest sketches carry weight due to this deep contextual weaving that is a testament of an ongoing human need for representation of the self and our position on the world through nature. Editor: In short, it makes me want to grab a sketchbook and get lost in the woods, with a good deer and a few happy accidents thrown in for good measure. Curator: Indeed, may the processes involved in Prestel's deer serve as an inspiration!