Groote zang en muzijk van beroemde muzijkanten / Grande musique et chants des principaux musiciens 1828 - 1913

This print, "Groote zang en muzijk van beroemde muzijkanten", was created by Erve Wismuller. It consists of a grid of sixteen small images, each portraying a musician with their instrument. The colour palette is simple with blues, reds and yellows dominating the image. Each musician is framed within a decorative border, creating a structured, almost taxonomic layout, but the cartoonish figures, with their exaggerated features and poses, disrupt any sense of formal order. This tension between structure and playfulness invites us to decode what is being communicated. The semiotic system at play here is a cultural commentary. The print engages with the concept of representation itself. The arrangement of musicians in a grid-like fashion suggests a system of classification. The artist challenges our understanding of representation by turning these musicians into stylized, almost caricatured figures which are more about cultural interpretation and less about true representation.