Schrijflei met koker 1878 - 1924

Julie de Graag made this ink drawing, Schrijflei met koker, with a very pared down palette of black and white. It’s almost as if the drawing is just emerging into being, and this gives it a lovely, tentative feeling. De Graag has left a lot of the paper bare, and the little image seems so lonely in the middle of all that space. It's just a dark rectangle with a cylinder sitting on it. Look closely and you’ll see the rectangle is a slate, and the cylinder a pot of something - maybe ink. It’s incredible how much information she conveys with so little. The whole thing reminds me a bit of Agnes Martin’s work, in the way that it finds so much in so little. Both artists seem to be asking: how little can I do, and still have it be something? It’s a question that’s well worth asking, and I think De Graag’s work continues to resonate with us today because of it.