Ex libris van Leo Schreiner 1934

This small drawing, made by Alexander Pock, is a bookplate, an “Ex Libris”. It’s all lines, a kind of delicate but obsessive hatching. The lines give a feeling of the weight and volume of the castle, but also the water. Look closely and you can see the drawing has a real handmade quality; it’s on paper with a kind of uneven surface. The lines are not all perfectly straight; they waver a little like handwriting. The level of detail is astounding, it really brings to mind the work of somebody like Alfred Kubin. Notice how the architecture of the castle is a jumble of styles, it almost seems like a collage of different buildings. Everything about the drawing is asking you to slow down, and really look. The imperfect hand-drawn lines, the almost obsessive level of detail, create a dreamlike image that is both real and unreal.