Schutblad A 1884 - 1927

Curator: So, looking at this drawing by Johan Antonie de Jonge, titled *Schutblad A*, made sometime between 1884 and 1927… it strikes me as so muted. Editor: My first impression? Almost overwhelmingly quiet. It’s mostly a blank off-white rectangle. I feel a stillness that's rare, especially in the context of the period. What purpose could it possibly serve? Curator: Precisely! And I think that’s where its strength lies. It’s graphite on paper, clearly a preparatory sheet – ‘schutblad’ meaning endpaper, so literally the protective leaf for a book. The artist wasn't aiming for a finished piece, but a workspace, a kind of buffer or canvas for something else. The smudges and notations are part of a utilitarian object. Editor: A workspace you say? Fascinating how a 'non-artwork' becomes a piece of art when we isolate and frame it like this. The numbers scribbled on, the barely-there marks—it’s like looking at the ghosts of ideas. Almost archaeological in a way, excavating layers of artistic intention from the remnants on this page. The history is quite explicit. Curator: Yes, consider what was happening socially during that period: shifting artistic styles, industrial changes. An endpaper suggests the slow, deliberate craft of bookbinding, a counterpoint to mass production, it’s almost radical, isn’t it? Even a simple page embodies cultural choices. Editor: And that tension speaks to the present day, too, doesn't it? The tension between fast consumption and conscious creation, of a hand-made element standing against something industrial or automated. It feels relevant because of its very emptiness. So how does a piece that is apparently empty resonate so fully, and why display it so deliberately in a collection of artwork? Curator: That it feels incomplete only deepens that for me – we are left to ask what should be contained within the book that has this "Schutblad A"? Editor: Well, I leave that as an existential question for anyone pondering in front of it...