Conceptbrief aan onbekend 1918

Here’s a letter, ‘Conceptbrief aan onbekend’ by Jan Veth, which I think means ‘Concept Letter to Unknown,’ made with ink on paper sometime around the turn of the century. The handwriting is like a drawing, or maybe the other way around, a drawing is like handwriting. Writing is just another form of mark-making after all. Look at this density, so many tiny squiggles packed together. It's kind of a chaotic surface, but with these glimpses of light peeking through, like a storm cloud breaking up. You can almost feel Veth’s hand moving across the page, pausing and starting, and scratching out a word here or there. The way the ink bleeds into the paper, it’s so delicate and fragile. It is as if he’s thinking aloud. For me, this piece feels connected to the dense, obsessive drawings of someone like Agnes Martin, though Martin is more spare and minimal and Veth is a maximalist. Both push at the edge of legibility and the nature of art itself. You can look at a piece like this for hours and never quite figure it out, and that's okay. Sometimes, not knowing is the best part.