Twee acrobaten c. 1915s - 1925s

Isaac Israels sketched ‘Twee acrobaten’ – that’s ‘Two Acrobats’ in Dutch – with pencil on paper, and it feels like he was right there in the circus, capturing a fleeting moment. Look at those sketchy, almost scribbled lines. I can imagine Israels, quickly, urgently, trying to keep up with the performers as they twisted and turned. It’s like he’s not just drawing what he sees, but the very energy of the performance itself. I wonder what he was thinking about as he made the sketch. Was he thinking about Degas who drew ballerinas? And what is the role of line here? Are the marks supposed to indicate a before and after? Are they about time as well as space? There’s a real conversation happening here, across time and between artists, about how we see and how we make. Israels' sketch invites us to join that conversation, to bring our own experiences and perspectives to it, and to find our own meanings in the marks on the page.