Blank 1930 - 1936

Curator: This work is a watercolor and colored pencil piece on paper entitled "Blank" by Niels Larsen Stevns, created sometime between 1930 and 1936. Editor: My first impression? It's like a sigh. A peaceful sort of…emptiness. All soft edges and faded blues. Almost makes me want to grab a brush myself, but then… what would I even add? Curator: Well, the "blankness" is interesting, isn't it? Considering Stevns' other work, often populated with figures from myth and biblical stories, this starkness could be seen as a deliberate choice. Perhaps a commentary on the interwar period? Editor: Maybe he just ran out of ideas! Or maybe... maybe it's about potential? Like, this isn't empty, it’s *full* of possibility. Like looking up at the sky on a cloudy day. You can imagine anything up there, right? Dragons, lovers, anxieties... Curator: That’s a romantic view. I'm inclined to consider it from a post-structuralist perspective. The blank page as a challenge to narrative, an intentional void inviting the viewer to project their own meaning, but within the socio-political vacuum of its time… Editor: Ooh, “socio-political vacuum,” that’s good. I still think it looks like something I would absentmindedly paint trying to calm down after too many cups of coffee, that very light-blue you find when diluting watercolours... Curator: It is tempting to imbue this ‘blank’ work with our current sensibilities. However, during this period, abstraction was taking hold…the blankness perhaps represents a stripping away, a critique of representation itself within art making? Editor: Critiques are exhausting. Honestly, it could be his kid grabbed his brush, and he was just too chill to care. What do we really know, huh? I like thinking this "Blank" is more of a window, it opens you to a certain peaceful contemplation. Curator: It certainly opens avenues for debate and is far from visually passive. There are so many ways we can unpack this, challenging art historical expectations with contemporary thought. Editor: Indeed. Looking at it has definitely cleared some space in my mind too. For good or ill, who can really say.