Annotaties 1893

Curator: This work, "Annotaties" by George Hendrik Breitner from 1893, offers a glimpse into everyday life through the lens of impressionism, captured in ink on paper. What strikes you about it? Editor: Well, it feels incredibly personal and immediate. The script looks spontaneous and even unfinished in its form. The materiality also gives me the sense of a peek behind the scenes, a mundane scene into someone's journal and records. What do you see in it? Curator: Considering Breitner's "Annotaties" from a materialist point of view, I'm particularly interested in what this piece reveals about the social context of artistic labor. These ink markings on paper speak to the economics and routines of artistic production. It challenges the high-art status associated with paintings, focusing instead on the infrastructure – the notes, supplies, and time management – that supports creative work. Look at the printed calendar entries; November, the weekday name in Dutch. Doesn't it make you consider the societal standardization of time, labor division and payment during the Industrial Revolution? Editor: Absolutely! The calendar aspect reminds me of the relationship of creative work to production schedules, not a concept so often considered for 19th century painting. Curator: Exactly. How was paper produced? Who had access to ink and calendars? It makes me curious, does the very act of annotation – the transformation of a pre-printed page – represent an act of agency and a subversion of rigid time structures? Editor: It really opens up a whole new way to think about art – not just the finished product, but the whole process and all the related materials. Curator: It invites us to question the established hierarchy between ‘high’ art and the more mundane aspects of daily existence, offering a unique, unvarnished glimpse into the realities of making art as work. It is exciting isn't it? Editor: It is! I have never seen that angle when assessing artworks, I will consider materiality more now. Thanks so much for this chat.