Kjetta Som Var Saa Fael Til Aa Ete 

Curator: Today we're looking at "Kjetta Som Var Saa Fael Til Aa Ete", a drawing attributed to Theodor Severin Kittelsen, rendered in ink. Editor: Whew, that title! And what a wonderfully strange scene. The whole composition leans into an unsettling, fairy-tale mood—dark whimsy, perhaps? It has the quality of something remembered imperfectly, like an old tale someone told me when I was a kid, the way the details are at once super clear but kind of floaty and unanchored, too. Curator: That floating quality is precisely what interests me. Note how the lines, though precise, seem to delineate form more as suggestion than solid mass. Observe also the tonal contrast achieved solely through hatching and cross-hatching. Editor: True. Though I’m most riveted by the two figures. That enormous, smug cat practically oozes arrogance as it lounges amid scattered fishbones. The old woman…she is almost ghoulish. I love her scrawny neck, exaggerated features, and the almost comical, resigned way she's offering up that bowl. Is it kindness, a dark joke, or a threat? Curator: One might suggest the scene is pregnant with psychological tension. Note how the lines articulating the cat’s form are fuller, more confident than those defining the woman—visually, the cat dominates. Semiotically, one could say… Editor: Woah, pump the brakes. All those bones really put this scene over the edge, that dark touch turns what may have just been a simple scene of pet-and-owner relationship into a really grotesque little tableau. Curator: I think your term 'tableau' is a fair assessment of how the scene, although perhaps intended as a domestic matter, functions as a broader examination of themes relating to power, dependency, even repulsion. Editor: Well, regardless of Kittelsen's intent, for me, it evokes very complex, and unsettling emotions. It sticks with you, doesn’t it? Curator: Indeed. It's an efficient piece. Something in the juxtaposition between minimal, clear articulation, and inherent darkness proves quite striking.