Ontwerp voor een monogram c. 1901

This is a design for a monogram by Gerrit Willem Dijsselhof, and it's done in pencil. You know, sometimes the most exciting thing about a work is seeing the artist's hand, and here, you really do. Look at the casual sketchiness of the pencil marks, the way the lines are kind of tentative, like he's feeling his way through the design. There's an immediacy to it, a sense of the artist thinking on paper. I love that it's not trying to be slick or perfect. It's just a record of an idea in progress. I'm reminded a little of the early sketches of Klimt, that same interest in ornament, and how it might become a language. This is what I love about art, how it can take something as simple as a monogram and turn it into a whole world of meaning and possibility. It feels open, unresolved, like an invitation to keep looking and thinking.