Morphine Addicts 1887

Curator: Looking at Paul-Albert Besnard’s etching, “Morphine Addicts” from 1887, I'm immediately struck by the somber mood it evokes. The scene feels heavy, almost claustrophobic, despite being rendered with delicate lines. Editor: The way the light falls creates an eerie contrast, drawing your eye directly to the subjects' faces. There is this palpable sense of inner turmoil made starkly visible through Besnard's mark-making, the tangible quality of the etched lines acting almost like a physical manifestation of suffering. Curator: As an etching, it involves a laborious process. The artist had to physically incise lines onto a metal plate. Think about the effort of that, the time spent hunched over a toxic acid bath! That physicality adds another layer to its meaning, this manual production almost echoes the addict's ritualistic engagement with the drug itself. It highlights the material engagement required. Editor: I see how that repetitive act of production relates to the repeated acts of the depicted figures. For me, that carafe in the foreground – nearly overflowing and distorted in its reflective curves - immediately reads as a powerful symbol. Curator: Symbol of what, exactly? I am wary of reductive symbolism here, let us think of production means. What did this sort of genre art signify within the Parisian salons of its day? This image, rendered for that audience, and circulating among them through the printing press, serves a purpose related to bourgeois values. Editor: I agree there’s a social dimension beyond simple symbolism, it depicts what becomes other and alien, and how addiction serves a larger social role. Consider, the way the artist uses the contrast between the focused gaze of one figure, and the faraway look of the other; for me it evokes a visual tension suggesting conflicting inner worlds, both of these figures lost. Curator: True, it showcases both the external realities of the scene through process, and a rich vein of complex inner states simultaneously. It offers up a potent view into societal margins. Editor: In seeing that social purpose you refer to in combination with personal turmoil and pain, my view on this etching is significantly altered. Curator: The production values within such artworks can often enrich and expand our views in unanticipated ways.