Vliegende reigers 1849 - 1924

Curator: Here we have "Flying Herons" by Hans Thoma, crafted sometime between 1849 and 1924 using ink as a medium. What strikes you first about it? Editor: It has this dreamlike quality, almost like looking into a faded memory. The herons give a sense of wildness but also something melancholy in the stark greyscale palette. Curator: Indeed, it's a fascinating print. Thoma clearly uses the graphic possibilities of the medium to depict birds mid-flight across a somewhat idyllic landscape. We must consider the labor and material realities that enabled these landscape print productions. Editor: Absolutely, the labor of the papermaker, the ink, the printing press… yet Thoma makes this medium sing; it’s loose but controlled at once. I love the way he's captured their ungainly grace, how they float with these comical stretched necks. It seems symbolic in the arrangement too. What’s he implying? Curator: One could argue it's Thoma's subtle reflection on landscape and ecological relations, the herons embodying nature itself navigating across developed spaces, all delivered for mass consumption in reproducible form. He may be touching on our shifting relation to the environment, the value assigned to landscape through consumer objects, the romantic allure for an imagined space and experience. Editor: Mmm, interesting point... or maybe he simply wanted to give us the freedom of flight! I am inclined toward something less didactic perhaps... Still, you make me think of how Thoma navigates tradition, both aesthetic and social tradition of printmaking here to invite the viewer to join a kind of imagined migratory process. Curator: Ultimately, that intersection is at the heart of the matter; this is a meditation on humans’ perception and relation to our surrounding. Editor: A visual poem etched in ink, inviting contemplation across decades and the cultural moment of each viewer. Curator: An exploration rendered with subtle elegance for many to see... the marvel of material transformed into image and insight.