Russische Bauern beim Essen 

Curator: This is a pencil drawing entitled "Russische Bauern beim Essen," or "Russian Peasants Eating," attributed to Wilhelm Amandus Beer. Editor: It's just a sketch, really. Loose, raw. It gives you the feeling of witnessing a fleeting moment in someone's everyday life. Makes you think about what those meals are actually like for them. Curator: Indeed. These genre paintings, even in sketch form, served an important social function. They allowed viewers, often of a higher social class, to engage with the lives of those typically unseen or ignored by the dominant culture. We can see the artist attempt to represent a slice of Russian peasant life, warts and all, as it were. Editor: Warts and all? Perhaps. Look at the tools here; this kind of sketching doesn't come cheap. High-quality drawing materials were only available to certain folks back in the day. The drawing represents a constructed view, doesn't it, mediated by specific, privileged artistic techniques. And mediated through display, here, at the Städel Museum! Curator: Museums like this one have certainly shaped the legacy of art, defining what gets remembered, displayed, and valued over time. Though this piece might feel raw, even the decision to preserve a sketch reveals certain values around authorship and artistry. Editor: Precisely! And what are they eating, one wonders? The kind of gruel made from labor in the fields. You can imagine that. What they make, is what they eat. Curator: Food becomes a marker, an important signifier of class and cultural identity here, then. The shared meal emphasizes the community, maybe even hinting at the potential social disruption these people, or this community, might have posed for imperial observers? Editor: That's it. And for the elite of the time? They dined with silver spoons, far removed from the peasant's simple bowl. A stark contrast in materiality that reflected not only social division, but access to, control of, and ownership of, all of the processes of extraction, production, labor. Curator: A valuable reminder that even what looks like a simple sketch can reflect complex social dynamics and, importantly, spark contemporary insights. Editor: Absolutely. Even in its unfinished state, it provokes, doesn't it? Gets us to look deeper.