Gezicht op een gebouw met een trapgevel c. 1828 - 1897

Editor: This intriguing pencil drawing, "Gezicht op een gebouw met een trapgevel" by Adrianus Eversen, created sometime between 1828 and 1897, depicts a building with a stepped gable. It has an ephemeral quality. What strikes you about it? Curator: Well, for me, it's interesting to consider this drawing within the context of architectural documentation and the art market. It's just a pencil sketch, which prompts the question: what function did it serve? Was it a preparatory study for a painting, or a work intended for sale? It is important to remember how art materials affect the work's accessibility, consumption and overall perception within the economic and cultural system. Editor: That's a good point. So, are you suggesting the sketch's inherent value is tied to the materials and possible labor more so than as some aesthetic object? Curator: Exactly! Think about the paper, the pencil – the ease with which such sketches could be produced and disseminated. This challenges the notion of the artwork as some singular, precious object and brings us back to thinking of it more as a manufactured good shaped by economic conditions and constraints on art materials available at the time of production. How readily were those raw art resources obtained in the late 19th Century? What would the relative cost and value of a sketchbook have been in relationship to that building in Eversen's era? Editor: So by examining the tools and conditions of its production, we understand more about the world the artist inhabited? Curator: Precisely! And we begin to see art less as pure aesthetic expression, and more as an outcome of very concrete material processes and market conditions. It really opens the work up, in my opinion. Editor: That does give me a lot to consider. It changes my perspective from admiring the artistry to understanding the practical and social influences at play. Thanks for helping me view art through a different lens.