Brief aan Jan Veth Possibly 1913

This letter to Jan Veth, written in Amsterdam on December 8th, 1913, by the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten, is all about mark making. It has to be said, the ink hasn’t aged well, it's faded to a ghostly brown in places, but you can still see the pressure of the nib on the page. Look at the way the inky line varies in thickness, swelling on the downstrokes, thinning as the pen flicks up and away! The writing is dense, the lines packed tightly together, full of looping ascenders and descenders. Note how the letterforms are not perfectly regular. They lean, compress, and expand, giving it such a personal, human feel. Like all good art, the more you look at it, the more it becomes abstract. When you look closely at the downstrokes, they have the same presence as a Franz Kline painting. This letter is a reminder that art is never really finished, only abandoned; like life, it is an ongoing conversation.