Blank 1864 - 1941

Editor: Here we have "Blank," a drawing on paper from 1864 to 1941 by Niels Larsen Stevns. Looking at this open book, I find myself pondering the weight of untold stories, all those blank pages just waiting to be filled. What do you see in this piece? Curator: It's impossible to ignore that title, isn't it? "Blank". Immediately, my mind goes to ideas around silence, erasure, potentiality, and resistance. Who gets to write history, and whose stories remain absent? Editor: Resistance? How so? Curator: Consider the power structures inherent in knowledge production, the gatekeepers of narratives. The 'blankness' here can be viewed as a subversive act, a deliberate rejection of prescribed narratives, especially during a time of significant social and political upheaval. Who decided what stories deserved to be told? Could this be a commentary on whose stories mattered, whose were silenced? Editor: That's a fascinating way to think about it. So, you're suggesting the artist is prompting us to consider what's missing? Curator: Precisely. What biases or assumptions do we bring to the viewing of such a 'blank' canvas? Does it evoke anxiety in its emptiness or does it invite agency, possibility? Even the age of the paper raises questions: what events might this blank page have silently witnessed? What histories were consciously *not* recorded here? Editor: Wow, I hadn’t thought of it that way at all. I was so focused on the emptiness, I missed all the potential it represents and all the possible narratives it questions. Curator: That tension between absence and presence, silence and potential, is precisely what makes "Blank" so compelling, especially when viewed through a critical, historical lens. It reminds us that art doesn't always offer answers; sometimes its greatest power lies in posing the right questions.