Postbefordring Paa Maanen 

Theodor Severin Kittelsen's "Postbefordring Paa Maanen" or "Mail Delivery on the Moon," presents an imagined lunar landscape rendered in pen and ink. Kittelsen's choice of drawing is significant, differing from the high art conventions of painting. It underscores the laborious process of creating form through countless individual strokes, echoing the manual effort involved in the very postal service he depicts. The sepia tones evoke the era’s photography and print media, grounding this fantastical scene in a recognizable reality. The moon, crisscrossed by a grid, mimics a globe, symbolizing the reach of terrestrial systems, perhaps even postal networks, into the unknown. This fine web of lines represents global communication. The ladder leading up a sharp peak reminds us of the labor and infrastructure required to build and maintain such far-reaching systems. Kittelsen’s work invites us to consider how such infrastructures, like capitalism, can extend into every facet of our lives.