Grisene 1845

Curator: Before us, we have Adolph Kittendorff’s 1845 lithograph, “Grisene,” currently held at the SMK - Statens Museum for Kunst. The artwork offers a vignette of genre painting from 19th-century Denmark. Editor: It strikes me as more somber than playful. Look at the close hatching of lines, the almost frantic energy used to build form and volume—it is a stark piece. Curator: Absolutely, and Kittendorff was navigating complex artistic currents at this time. Consider the rise of the National Romantic movement—artists turned towards the local, depicting ordinary life with a certain idealized sentimentality. Works like "Grisene" enter a broader discussion about the value of the rural within national identity. Editor: Yes, and yet there is such an intense observation of animalistic forms that surpasses any overt idealism. I’m drawn to the almost sculptural treatment of the pigs huddled together. Note how each mark is purposefully placed to simulate fur and form and evoke texture in such simple mediums like ink and lithograph. Curator: Exactly. The medium itself is interesting: printmaking democratized images like this, making them accessible to a wider audience and impacting the social landscape of artistic reception and meaning-making. Images of this type circulated widely and were imbued with a shared set of social understandings of landscape and animals, ideas around cultivation and wildness. Editor: Do you think the relative cheapness of the medium takes away from its expressive capabilities? I believe the artist’s focus on representing realistic form is a sophisticated aesthetic and material response to that condition. Curator: A very insightful reading of the piece's artistic position. To wrap up, it seems Kittendorff is actively participating in contemporary debates, using artistic representation of form and content to add meaning. Editor: Yes, what may at first glance seem like a commonplace observation of farm animals becomes a deep dive into the nature of art and society itself.