Bandontwerp voor een boek gepubliceerd door dr. P. Kieft 1884 - 1952

Reinier Willem Petrus de Vries made this book design, probably with ink on paper. You can see the trace of his hand in the careful letterforms, but also in the looser scribbles and exploratory marks. I think of artmaking as a kind of conversation with yourself, and this piece lays bare some of that process. The grid peeking through gives it a sense of structure and restraint, but the handmade quality of the script pushes against that. There are several attempts at the same phrase, one stacked on top of the other, like variations on a theme. It reminds me of Cy Twombly’s use of language, or even some of the concrete poets, where the form and the meaning of the words become intertwined. It's really about the materiality of language, the way it looks and feels. And how meaning is never fixed, but always open to interpretation.