Dental Chair c. 1937

Curator: It's kind of eerie, isn't it? Editor: Indeed. What a curious object. We are looking at Lucien Verbeke’s "Dental Chair" from circa 1937, rendered in watercolor and pencil. It's… unsettlingly elegant? Almost dainty for something associated with, well, dental procedures. How do you interpret this work? Curator: I see a ghost of an object. It is an armchair on stilts—refined legs but tinged with what it truly represents. Verbeke perfectly captures that tension in this drawing. Note how he positions it against its own sketch – the fleshed out versus the bare bones of what it truly represents. What springs to mind for you? Editor: It makes me think about the clinical detachment required in medicine. To see this elegant chair, and remember its intended purpose—to cause necessary discomfort, brings that detachment sharply into focus. The two views further push that concept – the diagrammatic sketch strips all sense of design down. Curator: Precisely! Almost as if Verbeke himself, with the dual rendering, is struggling with his own relationship to it, and his cultural understanding. As dental treatments continued to change, the chair loses its refinement and gets right down to business – stripping away the layers just as is presented to us. We expect tools of function, not instruments of grace! Editor: That’s a fantastic point, the conflicting visual statements. It has given me a fresh view of the changing expectations for how clinical work presents to our world. Thank you. Curator: My pleasure, I hope our chat allows visitors a greater sense of time passing. It’s always a joy when our perspectives help illuminate an artwork like this!