Fotoreproductie van een tekening van een engel voor een zittende man before 1868

Editor: We're looking at "Fotoreproductie van een tekening van een engel voor een zittende man" – that’s Photo Reproduction of a Drawing of an Angel Before a Seated Man, made before 1868 by Ludwig Angerer. It looks like a print of a photograph. There’s a rather despondent-looking man with what looks like an angel appearing behind him in a cloud. I'm curious, what jumps out at you when you see this work? Curator: Well, aren’t we all despondent-looking men waiting for our angels? It's that longing for… something, anything… beyond the earthly, the everyday. Angerer has staged a really compelling allegory here. Editor: Allegory? Curator: Absolutely. This isn’t just a portrait, is it? It’s a story, an idea about… inspiration? Hope? Maybe even madness, wouldn’t you say? That swirling cloud almost looks like the thoughts that threaten to overcome us, but from within it appears… divine intervention. It makes me wonder about Angerer himself – what inspired him? What angels or demons did he wrestle with to produce work like this? Editor: It does have a dreamlike quality to it. The softness of the photographic print adds to that, I think. And framing the picture on the page like that also helps it feel like another world entirely. Curator: Precisely! The conscious decisions on presentation become a piece of the statement itself. It calls attention to the medium. And the dream might as well exist inside the ether where angels reside, like those between waking and sleeping. We see, again and again, echoes of Angerer in his portraits; of course, all great artists find new and interesting ways to sneak themselves into the conversation. Editor: It's funny, I saw melancholy first, but now I see it as almost… hopeful. I’ll have to think about angels differently! Curator: That's the magic, isn’t it? That’s the mystery! And to ask, what do we desire to draw into being, what possibilities and “angels” do we desire to become visible in our lives?