Annotaties c. 1892 - 1923

Curator: We're looking at "Annotaties," a drawing dating roughly from 1892 to 1923, by George Hendrik Breitner, now housed in the Rijksmuseum. Editor: It looks like a page torn from a ledger or maybe a sketchbook. It's filled with cramped handwriting and numerals— a sort of coded record in fading pencil on aged paper. It feels quite intimate. Curator: It’s fascinating because these annotations, precisely due to their private nature, offer an unvarnished glimpse into Breitner's working methods and daily life. The casual jottings allow us to question the romantic ideal of the artist removed from the day to day struggles. Editor: Absolutely. You can practically smell the artist's studio: paper, ink, maybe even the faint scent of turpentine. It highlights the labor involved, the sheer process of accounting for materials and ideas. It is far away from perfect, exhibiting some hand lettering with notes faded over time. Curator: And this also opens a door to thinking about artistic practice as an act of continuous notation and revision, rather than solely about those finalized works intended for gallery display. We're catching him, in the moment, so to speak. Editor: Definitely, it also dissolves that traditional high/low art division. We often valorize finished paintings, but here's the messy, vital underbelly, the raw materials, if you will, revealing the labor often hidden in the finished work. Curator: Looking at it, the arrangement does remind me how artistic identity can be constructed, negotiated, and reshaped within these institutional contexts. Editor: True. And that these perceived ‘masterpieces’ rest upon the physical realities of pencils, paper, time spent, all those quantifiable elements often disregarded by art history. The Dutch Golden Age romantic vision clashes harshly with the more mundane elements of drawing on aged paper. Curator: The fact that this ended up preserved, displayed…it makes one wonder what other kinds of personal ephemera are also essential to understanding any artistic creation in their respective contexts. Editor: Ultimately, I am more convinced that the art lives in those hidden-away things, rather than the showpieces the public flocks to, these little Annotaties make it real.