Brief aan Willem Bogtman Possibly 1931 - 1937

This is a letter by Richard Nicolaüs Roland Holst, written in pen on paper. It's a simple thing, a note really, but the writing itself is where the life is. Look how the letters lean and loop, each word a little dance. The ink isn't precious, it's practical. You can almost feel him scratching away, the pen a kind of extension of his own thoughts. It reminds me that making art can be like breathing – you just do it, no big deal, but it fills you up all the same. There’s something very immediate and unfiltered about handwriting, a direct line to the artist's thoughts, like Cy Twombly's scribbles, raw and real. In art, sometimes the smallest, most throwaway things can be the most alive. It shows that art making is just another way of communicating like a good old fashioned letter.