Bacchanaal 1891

Curator: Oh, this looks… rather frenzied, actually! Like a glimpse into a secret garden after a particularly rowdy party. Is that right? Editor: Indeed! What you are looking at is "Bacchanaal" by Armand Heins, created in 1891, rendered in pencil and charcoal. A genre painting rooted in figuration. Curator: Figuration certainly captures it. All those… figures! Are they tipsy? Or just passionately enjoying some really ripe fruit? There's this blurring line between abandon and exhaustion, it almost feels forbidden... Editor: This piece is a fascinating window into the late 19th-century artistic treatment of the Bacchanalia – rites associated with Bacchus, the Roman god of wine, freedom, intoxication, and ecstasy. While they celebrated freedom from restraint, in reality they often barred the participation of women and enslaved people from these celebrations of liberation. Curator: Ah, now the rowdiness makes a bit more sense! Like they're almost trying *too* hard to have a good time? I mean, artistically it works because all those swirling lines give it movement, but there is almost this feeling of being forced or something that goes awry. The whole thing feels incredibly fragile, sketched on a whim before fading from memory… Editor: And I think that tension – the contrast between proclaimed freedom and lived experiences, like, what are the implications of "freedom" for some depending on unfreedom of others?– that contradiction is palpable here. Look at the shadowed areas of the figures – almost as if darkness is chasing or clinging to them. Curator: Yeah, they almost blend with the dark vegetation of the landscape. Makes you wonder if pleasure always has a shadow attached to it, right? The pursuit of it for a few at the expense of many others. A sketch but so very complicated, I am really not sure who gets invited and who has to hide outside of the garden walls. Editor: Absolutely. And in a way, that fragility perhaps makes the critique all the more potent, forcing us to really see what's in front of us, asking difficult questions, so relevant today. Curator: Right! It has an eerie premonitory quality to it that time seems to have done very little to fix!