Abklatsch van de krijttekening op pagina 56 1901 - 1907

This drawing, made by Willem Witsen, is a page from a sketchbook, smudged with the faint memory of a chalk drawing. The surface has this hazy, dreamlike quality, and the texture of the paper almost feels like skin, porous and absorbent. Look closely, and you can see how the chalk dust clings to the page, creating a soft, granular effect, especially towards the bottom right corner, where the residue darkens. It’s like a ghost of an image, caught in the act of disappearing. This piece reminds me of Rauschenberg's erased de Kooning drawing, a bold statement about artmaking, but here, it feels more delicate, more like a whisper. It's a study of absence, maybe, or a meditation on the ephemeral nature of images. It makes you wonder what was there before, and what traces we leave behind.