Frontispiece 1812

Curator: Ah, Turner's "Frontispiece." It's an etching, a dance of lines, isn't it? Editor: It feels like a stage set after the performance. Architectural fragments and natural forms collapsing together. Curator: Yes! You get the sense of something grand, perhaps romantic, being dismantled, re-imagined... or maybe just forgotten. Editor: Given Turner’s investment in maritime scenes, I wonder if the decay might symbolize the decline of British naval power. The etching presents us with the aftermath of empire. Curator: I can see that. Or perhaps it is just Turner showing us that beauty can be found even in decay, a crumbling aesthetic… he found the sublime everywhere. Editor: Perhaps. But beauty always bears the traces of violence. Consider the colonial context of 19th-century aesthetics... Curator: Always something to uncover, isn't there? Editor: Always. And that's how art keeps speaking to us.