Brief aan Philip Zilcken before 1920

This is a letter from around the turn of the century by Fernand Khnopff, and it looks like it was written with a very fine nib pen and sepia ink. It’s a deeply personal thing, right, a letter, but look at the beautiful evenness of the marks, the controlled slant of the letters, you can see the care in how he holds the pen, and the patience involved in writing like this. I love the way the dark ink sits on the pale paper. You can almost feel the smooth surface of the page and the slight drag of the pen across it. The controlled movement of the letters makes me think of Agnes Martin and her controlled grids. I like to imagine him, Khnopff, at his desk carefully composing each line, a kind of meditation. It reminds me that making art, or even writing a letter, can be a really intimate process, a quiet conversation with oneself and, in this case, with Philip Zilcken, across time. It's nice to be reminded that art is just the ongoing exchange of ideas.