Brief aan Philip Zilcken

This letter, written by Léonce Bénédite, is a little window into art making as a process of exchange. You can see the hand of the artist in the cursive script, the slight variations in pressure and rhythm as the pen moves across the page. The color is muted, almost monochromatic, yet it’s full of subtle contrasts. It’s like a quiet conversation between the paper and the ink. The artist’s looping script makes a pleasing pattern of marks on the page. I can see a kind of drawing in the written letter. This reminds me of Cy Twombly's work, which also treats writing as drawing. Maybe all art is a kind of writing, and all writing a kind of art. Anyway, these things are never definitively one thing or the other, and that’s why we keep looking, right?