Het leven van De Ruiter 1865 - 1875

Curator: "Het Leven van De Ruiter," or "The Life of De Ruiter," is the name of this engraving from somewhere between 1865 and 1875, attributed to George Lodewijk Funke. It presents the life of De Ruiter in a series of framed images like a comic strip. It feels so ordered, and yet teeming with a hidden world. It draws me in! Editor: My first impression is that the grid format feels oddly…industrial. Like a catalog sheet of processes. Look how these repetitive frames organize De Ruiter's life like stages on an assembly line. The prints almost objectify De Ruiter and package him into neat little episodes, a product almost! Curator: I see your point. I'm taken by its whimsical aspect; each stage feels infused with some essence. Notice how one image shows De Ruiter being knighted? How splendid, that someone decided that moment must be a frame, a story, to guide these little kids' worlds, that it needed to be material. Editor: It really speaks to how the consumption of art—these images in particular—plays a crucial role. These kinds of prints, given their means of reproduction, had the ability to shape the worldview of countless young people. But what does the repetitive imagery indicate in the lives of the Dutch and to this nationalistic perspective? How many hands were on this material from start to end, each repeating some function and making it whole for consumption? Curator: The narrative unfolds across these framed segments, each revealing an intimate, human moment against a broader historical backdrop. The panel of his death reminds me of old family portraits that can say something, however slight, of the passing nature of power. How these very ordinary acts of living became art. Do you think so? Editor: Yes, and perhaps how "ordinary" those acts really were is open for debate! But I find myself wondering about the economic impact of these types of engravings during the era. The materials involved, the skill of the engraver... it all translates to understanding artistic economies on a wider scale. The materiality and the reproducibility challenge traditional notions of singular authorship or genius too, which is quite potent. Curator: Well, it has given me such pause. I feel my relationship to it now as so personal as to make these frames into windows—I look through them as through his memories now. Editor: For me, it highlights the importance of assessing art not as isolated aesthetic events, but as part of a larger material network involving creation, distribution, and cultural impact.