Uidentificerede rids 1900 - 1905

Niels Larsen Stevns made this drawing at an unknown date with graphite on paper, and it's held at the SMK. The thing that really grabs me about this drawing is how the pencil lines seem to hover on the surface, they build up these forms in a way that's both tentative and confident. I mean, these aren't just random doodles, you know? There's a real sense of searching, of trying to capture something elusive. You can see in the bottom left corner a collection of denser lines forming a mass, as if searching for a shape from a cloud. I think that's what makes this drawing so compelling: it's the artist thinking on paper, trying to figure something out, and letting us in on the process. It reminds me of those Cy Twombly scribbles, where the act of drawing becomes a kind of performance, a dance between the hand, the eye, and the mind. And isn’t that what art is all about? It's not about having all the answers, but about asking the right questions, and about embracing the ambiguity of the world.