Rosebud 

Editor: This painting is called "Rosebud" by Kay Nielsen, made with tempera. There's an undeniably enchanting aura to this fairy-tale scene. What story do you find unfolding through its layers? Curator: Let's consider the layers literally. Nielsen is using tempera, a meticulously slow medium. This resonates with the labor required to build, maintain, and perhaps even 'discover' this castle overtaken by nature. It blurs the line between craft and "fine" art. Does the princess even want to be rescued, or has she, and her captor, achieved symbiosis with this ruin of a castle. Editor: That’s interesting, to think about symbiosis rather than captivity. How would that connect with the consumption aspect of your curatorial framework? Curator: Well, think of fairy tales themselves. They're not innocent. They circulate cultural values, anxieties about class, gender, and power, aren’t they? Consider the market for Nielsen's illustrations. These weren't cheap reproductions for mass consumption initially. They adorned deluxe editions, targeting a wealthy clientele who literally consumed fantasy and idealised beauty, reinforcing class divides and romantic notions of a distant, fabricated past. Is it even the real past at all? The materials speak volumes here. Editor: So the luxury of the book itself, and the way people enjoyed them back then, kind of mirrored the fairytale’s themes of extravagance and desire. I never thought about the price of art adding to the artwork meaning like that. Curator: Exactly. The painting is not merely an image, but an artefact of a particular historical moment. It reveals as much about those who consumed it as it does about the tale it depicts, with all of the power imbalances represented in its commodification of beauty and nostalgia. Editor: I see it completely differently now! Focusing on the making and selling of it has shed a lot of light. Thanks. Curator: Indeed. This is the material world showing us what makes something matter, beyond the surface.