Prentbriefkaart aan Philip Zilcken Possibly 1921 - 1928

This postcard to Philip Zilcken seems to be constructed of graphite or ink on paper, with stamps. It's all about process: layers of marks building up an image, not unlike painting. What strikes me is the physical act of writing, the texture of the script almost obscuring its message. Look at the looping and swirling of the handwriting. It's like a dance, a visual record of the hand’s movement across the surface. The stamps on the upper right, those green and blue rectangles, they anchor the composition. I love how they are both functional and decorative, adding a pop of color and a hint of bureaucratic order to the otherwise frenetic energy of the handwriting. You could say that Cy Twombly was doing something similar with his chaotic handwriting paintings. It reminds us that art is not just about conveying information, but about the pleasure of making and seeing. It's about embracing the messy, the imperfect, and the ambiguous.