Arme August 1894 - 1959

Curator: Welcome. Here we have “Arme August,” or “Poor August,” by Monogrammist JGr, dating from between 1894 and 1959. It's a print currently held at the Rijksmuseum. What do you make of it at first glance? Editor: A sequence of escalating silliness! Each frame bubbling with awkwardness, pratfalls, a symphony of mishaps. The clown figure, the so-called "August," seems to trigger every conceivable disaster. Curator: Absolutely. What strikes me is the almost industrial production of humor here. Look at the uniformity of the panels, the deliberate repetition of figures, the sense of a manufactured comic narrative. Editor: Manufactured, maybe, but also deeply felt. The figure tumbles through each scenario like a stand-in for our own stumbles through life, his oversized trousers practically begging to trip him up again and again! There's something empathetic about that endless cycle of error. Curator: And yet, there’s also the suggestion of control and social commentary woven in. Notice the omnipresence of the authority figure, almost a ringmaster character, supervising, occasionally intervening. The "poor August" is forever caught between the whims of fate and structured social command. The means of production, of control, in laughter. Editor: Perhaps, but there's a beautiful rebellion, a "carnivalesque" spirit. He keeps getting up. The narrative, in spite of those little dramas of class friction, leans ultimately toward something affirmative and joyful. Curator: I can agree that it has a buoyancy. Perhaps the print, through its repetition and comic style, reflects a social appetite for consistent, predictable amusement—a way of processing, in an undemanding, iterative fashion, a social order in change? Editor: Or maybe just an invitation to laugh at ourselves, reflected in the awkward antics of "Arme August." Either way, I appreciate this little monument to the perpetual pratfall.