Ruine Ockenfels c. 19th century

Curator: What strikes me first about Johann Adolf Lasinsky’s “Ruine Ockenfels” is the airiness of the scene, the feeling of wide-open space even in a ruin. Editor: It's certainly picturesque, but what interests me is how these kinds of landscape drawings, so common in the 19th century, often elide the labor that produces such “natural” beauty. Who tended those terraced vineyards? What was their relationship to the crumbling remnants of power above them? Curator: Perhaps Lasinsky invites us to consider that relationship by depicting the ruins alongside the vineyards. It's as if nature and human history are intertwined, each bearing the marks of time. Editor: Or perhaps Lasinsky, like many of his contemporaries, romanticizes a feudal past while obscuring the realities of the present, a present built on the backs of laborers whose stories are conspicuously absent. Curator: Well, whether intentional or not, the drawing sparks important questions about power, labor, and the stories we tell about the past. Editor: Indeed. It's a reminder that even seemingly innocent landscapes are steeped in complex social histories.