De Graaff, minister van Koloniën 1919 - 1925

Patricq Kroon made this drawing of De Graaff, minister van Koloniën with graphite on paper. Looking at this artwork, it seems Kroon was really going after De Graaff! I mean, the guy’s clutching his stomach with this look of utter dismay. You can almost feel what Kroon felt when he was drawing this. He’s really going for it with the caricature and the symbolism, and I bet he felt that the message of the work needed to be really, really clear. But that’s what political cartoons are all about, right? Grabbing you by the lapels and shouting, "Look at this!" And I think the artist is saying something about power, about the weight of responsibility or maybe the burden of history. It reminds me that art doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Artists are always talking to each other, responding to the world, and trying to make sense of it all through marks on a surface. I think there are so many ways to be a painter, a drawer, a maker, but the point is always to try.