Karikatuur van Leo Gestel en zijn vrouw 1891 - 1941

Leo Gestel made this caricature of himself and his wife with pen and watercolour. The whole thing's got this sepia-toned dreaminess, the kind of palette you find in old photographs, which I love. There's a real fluidity to the way the wash spreads across the paper, kind of like memory itself – hazy edges, not quite sure where things begin or end. And look at those eyes, big white pools staring right through you. The paint’s so thin it feels like you could almost breathe through it. The background details are sketched out, like half-formed thoughts; sailboats and maybe windmills? Gestel had a knack for capturing the absurd in the everyday. Think about someone like George Grosz, who used caricature to comment on the times. Gestel is inviting us to see the humor in ourselves, and maybe not to take everything so seriously. It's an ongoing conversation, isn't it, this art thing?