Faun and Nymph 1940 - 1941

Curator: Here we have "Faun and Nymph" by Edvard Weie, crafted between 1940 and 1941. It’s a striking watercolor painting currently housed here at the SMK. What are your initial thoughts? Editor: The forms feel fragmented, almost dreamlike. The palette is subdued, but there's a dynamism, like a memory trying to surface. Is that truly supposed to depict a faun and a nymph? I feel there is so much more. Curator: Well, what strikes me is the interplay of material and form. He used watercolors, a typically delicate medium, to create these powerful blocks of color. Look at how the water stains the paper and lends to the work’s ethereal appearance. It contradicts the weight of the figuration in a very interesting way. How do the iconographies function here? Editor: Exactly. If we accept these forms as a faun and nymph, they immediately call up centuries of associations: wildness, nature, sexuality, the Golden Age...but they are represented through this screen of fragmented color. The choice to almost obscure those figures creates tension. Are they hidden, repressed, or simply dissolving into memory? Curator: It certainly obscures any specific classical narrative, perhaps purposefully distancing itself from earlier artistic traditions. Weie seems focused on the act of depicting those ideas through color itself, more than on simply depicting the subject matter, right? Editor: Yes. The blocks of colour could be said to represent emotional states or a disruption in memory that allows the themes associated with nymphs and fauns to be newly revisited, or reconfigured in new forms. What does the physicality of these watercolors tell us about the moment of creation and labour in its production? Curator: As I see it, the liquidity of watercolor allowed Weie a level of spontaneity in his artistic labor, right? Each stain, each blending of pigments reflects not only conscious design but also the unpredictable behaviour of the medium, embodying a dance between artistic intention and the material world’s autonomy. We can thus imagine Weie fully absorbed in its materiality as it both reflected and directed his choices in pigment, touch, pressure and gesture. Editor: This truly opens it up beyond a simple figural representation and enables the themes to persist on their own beyond specific time and place. Curator: Indeed. Weie pushes against the confines of any singular, fixed meaning. Editor: Which offers so many possibilities for future viewing. Thank you.