Spotprent op de verlaging van het dagbladzegel, 1867 1867

Curator: Johan Michaël Schmidt Crans’ 1867 engraving, “Spotprent op de verlaging van het dagbladzegel,” presents a darkly humorous scene. I can almost feel the sting of the printing press in this caricature. What leaps out at you? Editor: The tools of production feel so… medieval! Like something out of a Kafka novel, all levers and screws. The paper is being literally crushed here. You feel the weight of labor, both intellectual and manual. The room looks poorly lit despite that window, so you already get this atmosphere of heavy duty labour. Curator: Absolutely. There’s a pressure conveyed in the very lines of the engraving, a kind of stifling effect mirrored, perhaps, in the theme itself: the reduction of the newspaper tax. Notice how the press looms almost as a character itself. Editor: I notice that the characters present here look at the scene happening in isolation from one another, we only perceive a slice of it with them; their attention being on their individual jobs at the printing press and the viewer’s attention being guided, also individually, to this image. The medium becomes part of the message; print, labour, accessibility and production coming together in the artwork itself. Curator: And the textual exchange furthers that message. The man on the left comments about it still hurting as the press lowers! Almost as if it’s an inevitability in society to exist between reduction and increased taxation; that it always hurts regardless! Editor: Yes! The whole image seems a comment on class. Are these newspaper magnates suffering along with the working class to maintain visibility? Is one group reliant on the exploitation of the other? Curator: It is an astute rendering of the political pressures weighing on the press. A clever way of visualising a policy change. It offers much food for thought about the true cost of information, both then and now. Editor: Indeed. Crans, with a seemingly simple image, reveals a complex world of social forces at work in the most ordinary objects and events. A potent reminder that even the daily news comes at a cost, both tangible and intangible.