Grooming cat 

Editor: This is "Grooming Cat," a drawing using pencil and chalk by Friedrich Wilhelm Hirt, housed here at the Städel Museum. The quick lines give it an ephemeral quality. What catches your eye from a formalist perspective? Curator: The elegant simplicity. Notice the economy of line. Hirt captures the essence of feline self-care with a network of linear articulations. The subtle shifts in pressure of the pencil or chalk – the swells and tapers – articulate the cat's form and imbue it with a sense of dynamism. Consider also the negative space. It is not merely absence but an active element, framing and defining the subject. Editor: It almost feels incomplete, a sketch more than a finished work. Is that deliberate? Curator: "Incomplete" suggests a lack. I argue instead that its power lies precisely in its reduction to essential form. Think of it as a distillation, the removal of the superfluous to reveal the underlying structure. We must address what is visually presented – the relational aspects between positive and negative shapes. Observe how the implied lines guide our eye. Does it have a structural integrity despite its minimal elements? Editor: Yes, the curves and angles create a kind of rhythm that keeps it from feeling static, even unfinished. I now see how a so-called ‘sketch’ can function as its own piece. Curator: Exactly! We, therefore, can engage the piece within its own vocabulary to define its excellence. Form and execution create this. The cat, even as a drawing, is palpable.