Deel van het bovenlichaam en hoofd van een man 1912 - 1940

Dick Ket made this drawing of the upper body and head of a man in pencil, but when exactly is a mystery. You see how lightly he’s marked the paper, as if he’s scared to press down too hard and make a mistake. I wonder what it was like for Ket to make this work, hovering between presence and absence, a ghost of a portrait. The marks are almost tentative, questioning. There’s a visible tension between what's there and what isn't. He’s not quite committing, as though he's feeling his way through the image. Ket’s drawing reminds me of other portraits where the artist is trying to find something of themselves in the other. Maybe he was grappling with his own identity, using the act of drawing as a form of self-inquiry. Looking at this piece, I'm reminded that art making is fundamentally an ongoing conversation, a dialogue across time. Artists build on each other’s ideas. Each artwork is a part of a larger story, constantly unfolding and evolving.