Equestrian monument c. 1845 - 1850

Curator: At first glance, it’s a spectral vision! Like a half-remembered dream. Editor: And a rather gloomy one. Spitzweg's "Equestrian Monument," dating from around 1845-1850 and held here at the Städel Museum, employs charcoal, pencil and chalk on paper. Immediately, the medium shouts, doesn't it? The monumentality reduced to fragile marks on humble paper. Curator: Exactly! It’s monumentality turned fleeting, a whisper of greatness rather than a booming declaration. I feel the Romantic spirit clinging to every blurred line. What's it saying? Something about memory, about lost empires... Editor: Or perhaps, about the social aspirations wrapped up in these displays of power? This sketch reduces a stone reality—public sculpture as propaganda—to something ephemeral. Makes you think about the workers quarrying stone versus the equestrian heroes lauded in plazas. The means of production versus the mythical hero. Curator: Hmm, you yank me back to earth with your blunt truths. But that tension, between the romantic yearning and the material reality, IS compelling. The sketchiness almost admits the fantasy. Like Spitzweg's poking fun at the whole glorification enterprise. Editor: Yes, and he’s poking with inexpensive materials! It's paper, charcoal—the stuff of everyday workshops, not the Carrara marble of some triumphal arch. Think of all those preliminary sketches produced but unseen. What value do we place on artistic labor, and how do museums reproduce existing hierarchies by celebrating "fine art" over craft? Curator: You always bring it back to labor! Which isn't wrong... I can see the material constraints playing out, how they amplify the overall fragility and feeling of something incomplete. Like a ghost haunting the very idea of grand pronouncements. It doesn't need to be a grand polished sculpture. It's perfect in its impermanence. Editor: The texture also really helps, too. By choosing humble materials like paper and chalk to make something great, there's just so much you can play with here! And maybe the incomplete state isn’t a weakness but, instead, makes it feel more potent, don't you think? It's this quiet, defiant gesture with simple, ordinary materials. Curator: Yes, almost as if the grand gesture lies in recognizing its own inherent flaws. And now, the dream deepens. It's funny how a quick sketch can hold so much! Editor: Absolutely. A constant reminder that art making can be, and often is, about elevating the ordinary through process. Thanks for that!