Blad 85 uit Stamboek van de leerlingen der Koloniale School voor Meisjes en Vrouwen te 's-Gravenhage deel II (1930-1949) Possibly 1936 - 1939

This spread from a ledger, ‘Blad 85 uit Stamboek van de leerlingen der Koloniale School voor Meisjes en Vrouwen te 's-Gravenhage deel II’ was made in the Netherlands sometime between 1930-1949. It’s got all these handwritten entries, with these precise lines and columns, but the handwriting is all over the place. I love seeing the hand of the artist, even when the “artist” is just a clerk filling out a form. There’s a real contrast between the hard, ruled lines and the soft, variable pressure of the ink. Look at the way some of the letters are thick and dark, and others are light and scratchy – you can almost feel the person writing, see them leaning into the page. And then there are these little photos pasted in, snapshots of these young women. It's cool that something so quotidian can also be so expressive. This record-keeping reminds me of On Kawara, with his date paintings, or Hanne Darboven and her endless grids. Like them, it's almost conceptual. It embraces something bigger than any one person's intentions.