Bachanalia 

Curator: Here we have a work entitled "Bachanalia" rendered in ink. It’s a drawing attributed to Christian Wilhelm Ernst Dietrich, likely dating from the 18th century. It resides here in the Städel Museum collection. Editor: It strikes me as…restrained chaos. The composition teeters on the edge of total disarray, but there's a current, almost like an electrical charge, binding everything together. Curator: It's a preparatory sketch, of course, so it wouldn’t have been intended as a finished work. But "Bacchanalia," referencing the Roman festival of Bacchus, the god of wine and ecstasy, became popular among history painters in the 17th and 18th centuries as expressions of artistic license. Here, the artist would be negotiating this theme of revelry with established expectations. Editor: And immediately the symbolism jumps out. We see the unrestrained joy through classical lenses—putti cavorting, the central figure draped with vines... even a glimpse of goatish features perhaps a satyr all these suggest wild abandon, all tied to potent ancient emblems of transformation. The lines are very much baroque. I sense an investigation of intoxication here – physical, artistic, or otherwise. Curator: Note, also, how this subject became acceptable within academic circles, particularly as these scenes allowed for depictions of the nude body. This study may have been considered an expression of elevated intellectual and aesthetic tastes among audiences. But its popularity and use by institutions could also be seen as sanitizing potentially dangerous or subversive material for the rising Bourgeoisie, containing its effects as they rose in prominence in European life. Editor: Interesting thought, there's such a sense of vital movement; a group of beings surrendering to impulses beyond intellect, that there's still the feeling that it still eludes rigid structure. The swift lines of the pen only amplify the transient state. Curator: Perhaps the act of drawing, of planning a painting about chaos, itself represents that struggle to control something so wild. It reveals the tension inherent in depicting raw emotion through culturally acceptable, learned means. Editor: Ultimately, it's these layers – the visible abandon against the underlying artifice – that invite such deep, on-going reflection, and it makes us question the ways such imagery reflects larger, established orders.