Portret van een Soendanese man c. 1921

Willem Witsen made this portrait of a Sundanese man using black chalk, here in the Rijksmuseum. I'm looking at the cross-hatching, those tiny, busy, little lines, which create this guy’s face and hat; it reminds me of those old photos that are blown up so much they become pure grain. It must have been a very repetitive and meditative process to create the image this way, mark after mark. I am thinking about what it would have been like to be Witsen, sitting in front of this man, trying to capture his essence in chalk. Did he feel the weight of representation? Did he consider how his Western gaze might influence the image? I bet he was trying to get those eyes just right. And what about the hat?! That’s a whole other world of pattern and form to decipher! And of course, like all artists, Witsen was in conversation with artists who came before him. We build on each other’s visions, you know? Each mark an echo, a response, a continuation of something that has already been said, but with a new accent.