Berekeningen 1905 - 1906

This page of calculations was made by Carel Adolph Lion Cachet and is currently kept at the Rijksmuseum. It is a field of numbers, fractions, and units of measurement done in thin strokes of dark ink on pale paper. Looking at it, I imagine Cachet hunched over his work, brow furrowed in concentration as he wrestles with these figures. You can almost feel the scratch of the pen on paper as he tries to bring order to his thoughts. I wonder, was he trying to make sense of the world through numbers? Was he trying to find some hidden pattern or structure beneath the surface of things? It reminds me of other artist’s notebooks I’ve seen – Cy Twombly's scrawled diagrams, or Eva Hesse's meticulous notes. Like them, Cachet is using the act of mark-making to explore ideas, to push against the boundaries of what he knows. And in the end, that's what art is all about, isn't it? It's about embracing uncertainty, about finding new ways of seeing and thinking and feeling.