Ornamenten 1889 - 1894

Curator: Oh, isn't this drawing by Antoon Derkinderen, aptly titled "Ornamenten," quite intriguing? He created it somewhere between 1889 and 1894, if I'm not mistaken. Editor: It has a real ghostly quality. Just pencil on paper, and you're peering into, like, the ether of someone’s design process, aren't you? Curator: Precisely! It's pure art nouveau, capturing its essence perfectly. Derkinderen focused on decorative design and form, paring down these potential ornaments to almost abstract shapes, geometric motifs... I find them hauntingly spare. Editor: Spare, yes, but also about industrial production and its inevitable byproducts—this could have become ironwork, textiles, something mass-produced. You see the connection, don't you, between the hand that drew it and the machines that could copy it a thousand times over? That material potential crackles here! Curator: Hmm, that reading definitely makes it grounded. For me, I'm caught by how incomplete they feel. You almost sense the other dimensions or future manifestations these motifs are aching for! Derkinderen leaves just enough on the page to ignite the imagination. Editor: Well, think of it this way: someone spent time and resources sharpening those pencils, sourcing the paper, paying for studio space, all so he could sit down and ideate possibilities for things to be physically *made*. To me it underscores the labor and cost of ornament. This wasn't effortless, ethereal creation; there are systems behind even the simplest pencil strokes! Curator: And what of the potential function they once held for him? Now lost to us except by this glimpse! This whisper of pattern making; this silent song, incomplete but not without immense interest... it leaves me with so many questions. Editor: The questions of value, maybe? Are these ornaments purely aesthetic additions? Are they intrinsic to function? I like thinking about that contradiction... It complicates a materialist viewpoint to feel such curiosity, wouldn’t you say? Curator: Indeed! It deepens it to ask, "To what end?": And for whom did he conceive such an understated beauty. Editor: Right – so, the paper's not just *there*; it represents material accessibility, skill acquisition, economic choices, all layered together to get Derkinderen to this single piece of, I'll grant you, quietly gorgeous design.