Fragmenten van prenten met wereldlijke en geestelijke klederdrachten 1581 - 1596

Editor: Here we have *Fragmenten van prenten met wereldlijke en geestelijke klederdrachten*, or Fragments of prints with secular and religious clothing, created between 1581 and 1596 by Abraham de Bruyn. It's at the Rijksmuseum. It looks like a page of studies or perhaps even discarded scraps. What strikes you about it? Curator: The apparent casualness is interesting, isn’t it? We’re seeing the backside of artistic labor. This wasn’t meant for public consumption, but it reveals the artist's process of image production. Note the deliberate use of easily available and cheap materials: paper, pencil and what seems like simple washes of watercolour. These are the ingredients, the raw matter, if you will, of creating those highly detailed prints. What do you think De Bruyn might have been planning with these figures? Editor: Perhaps patterns for some series of prints? Was this standard practice at the time? Curator: Exactly. Consider the economic system. Printmaking at the time was increasingly geared toward a market. So De Bruyn isn't just an "artist" in the romantic sense; he’s a producer, generating designs that can be replicated and sold. He may well have been designing specific outfits in relation to class. The fragmentary nature suggests, in my mind, something in progress or even abandoned for economic considerations. Do you agree? Editor: Yes, that makes perfect sense. Seeing the individual sketches, instead of the final polished product, really shifts the focus from the artistic genius to the work itself. It highlights the labor and commercial aspect. Curator: Precisely. And from that labor emerges a new means for ideological circulation. The clothes denote the means of material production, as much as their wearers do. Editor: I never thought of it that way, it makes me see it in an entirely different context now!