Ansigtsskitser 1900 - 1905

Curator: Looking at these ethereal pencil sketches, created between 1900 and 1905 by Niels Larsen Stevns, a striking feeling of melancholy settles in. What is your first take on them? Editor: I'm struck by the unfinished quality and raw expressiveness. The sketchiness amplifies their almost ghostly quality. It gives a sense of them being not quite present. Curator: The way Stevns captures the essence of these figures with such minimalist lines evokes compelling socio-psychological inquiries. We can understand that within the socio-political dynamics in 1900s Denmark, how the gaze could suggest both internal strife and societal expectation. Editor: Right, and examining Stevns’s social circle then reveals possible links to certain Symbolist movements or perhaps philosophical currents of the time, lending these figures a political-philosophical weight beyond simple figuration. It prompts considering how Stevns perhaps viewed the roles of these figures within society. Curator: Absolutely. As drawings held within the collection of the SMK, Statens Museum for Kunst, their public display raises questions about representation and access to visual art from that time period, too. Which identities did he capture in his artworks, who did he choose to exclude from the frame, and in which ways the museum makes space for all? Editor: Museums also serve as stages for historical narratives. Presenting these sketches also challenges us to re-evaluate who are being remembered by art institutions, whose stories deserve to be heard, and to whom cultural power is granted by public museums such as SMK. Curator: They seem so transient and timeless simultaneously! Perhaps Stevns was consciously exploring his contemporary anxieties with modern subjectivity. Editor: In conclusion, Niels Larsen Stevns delivers these characters as though his drawings operate on personal and socio-cultural layers. The pencil is also able to suggest at both vulnerability and defiance that transcends the sketches as mere artistic representation, yet as narratives of a nuanced historical experience.