Dorfansicht (Dausenau bei Ems) 18 - 1843

Editor: We're looking at Victor Müller's "Dorfansicht (Dausenau bei Ems)" from around 1843, a pencil drawing housed in the Städel Museum. It’s incredibly detailed, almost photorealistic in its depiction of these old buildings. How would you interpret this work? Curator: The very materiality of this work, pencil on paper, speaks volumes. This wasn’t created with the intent of "high art," perhaps. The availability and affordability of these materials placed artmaking in reach for a broader segment of society. This questions established hierarchies. Consider the labor involved – the artist painstakingly rendering each brick, each piece of timber. Editor: So, you're saying the accessibility of pencil as a medium changes how we see the drawing? Curator: Exactly. The choice of pencil connects it to a more widespread culture of documentation and sketching, diverging from the "fine art" narrative surrounding painting, for example. Look closely at the etching; how the artist manipulated light and shadow through line weight is fascinating. It transforms the ordinary – vernacular architecture – into something worth contemplating. This wasn't some grand palace but the artist's decision to devote skill, labour and time. Editor: It's interesting to think about the buildings themselves as products of labour too, mirroring the drawing. Curator: Precisely! The hand-built quality of the buildings finds resonance in the hand-drawn image. The consumption of landscapes in this period, especially within burgeoning tourism, provides additional insight into how ordinary vistas may be commodified into "scenes" by the leisure and consumption patterns emerging within an early industrialized, consumerist social formation. Editor: I never thought about pencil sketches having so much to say about social structures. Thanks for pointing that out! Curator: The medium and mode of production are often where you'll find these embedded ideologies. Viewing art with a focus on how things are made and circulated offers a different vantage point.