Notater 1913 - 1914

Curator: Right now, we're standing in front of J.A. Jerichau’s "Notater," created between 1913 and 1914. It's currently held at the SMK, the Statens Museum for Kunst. The piece combines drawing, ink, colored pencil, pen, and watercolors on paper. What strikes you immediately about this densely inscribed page? Editor: It feels intimate, almost voyeuristic, like stumbling upon a deeply personal journal left open. The script dances across the page, a flurry of thoughts captured mid-flight. Curator: Absolutely. Jerichau, with his North-Renaissance leanings, he understood how power dynamics impact what art gets produced. So here’s a raw, uncensored expression, a rebellion against polished artistic convention, wouldn't you say? Editor: I do, yet I sense a yearning, too. Despite the apparent spontaneity, there's a deliberate hand at work. The choice of materials, the composition… It's controlled chaos. Do you think this has been transcribed, then maybe destroyed, and later it became the whole point of the exercise? Curator: The use of layered mediums – pen, ink, watercolor – adds a visual texture that really echoes the complexity of thought itself. I find that the writing moves between confident pronouncements and hesitant queries... Almost battling it out, line after line. Editor: True, and it's tempting to try and decipher it all, to uncover hidden meanings, the personal. The Historian in me can see the journal itself became a piece of artwork, not just a keeper of them, for an artistic mind such as Jerichau's! It’s fascinating how art making transforms what he looks at, too. Curator: So much here feels provisional and fleeting. Maybe that's why it resonates so strongly; it's a tangible record of a mind grappling with something just beyond reach, perhaps not even knowing it needed resolution. Editor: Yes. Art gives us such insights in that space between thought and solid knowledge. The mind's dance on the paper! Thank you for opening up those windows for me today.