Rygeren 1640

Editor: This is Adriaen van Ostade's "The Smoker," etched in 1640. The cross-hatching creates a captivating texture, but it's also quite…gritty, almost unpleasant. How do you interpret this work focusing on its visual elements? Curator: The roughness, precisely. Note the density of lines defining the figure versus the relative spareness in the background. Ostade manipulates value and texture to command our attention. See how the oval composition focuses inward to concentrate on the subject of this print. Editor: I see what you mean. It's like the hatching amplifies the folds and texture in the smoker’s clothing. Almost gives them a weighty, three-dimensional form. The figure really dominates the pictorial space within the print. But why focus so intensely on this smoker, a genre subject? Curator: Let us consider line as a form. The artist uses hatching in many directions across the page. From what internal rule does the hand of the artist proceed? Perhaps the effect of this use of line makes this etching significant rather than its cultural meaning? Editor: Hmm. So you are saying it’s not necessarily what he depicts but how he depicts it that makes this piece work? The visual impact from the quality of line defines it as a successful artwork? Curator: Precisely. The starkness of the lines forms its own kind of crude elegance. Think about the way he handles shadow and light using only line. Does it change the way you see it now? Editor: It does! Now I see the complexity of his technique instead of getting distracted by subject. Thank you. Curator: A rewarding outcome; indeed, formalism allows us new eyes.