Studie 1886 - 1923

George Hendrik Breitner made this page of notes, or Studie, with a pencil sometime in his life; it now lives at the Rijksmuseum. It's all about process, isn't it? The scribbles and doodles, the way one mark leads to another in an unplanned, almost unconscious way. The pencil on paper is so immediate, so raw. You can almost feel the pressure of Breitner's hand as he jots down numbers and random thoughts. Look at the way the lines vary in thickness and darkness, some barely visible, others bold and assertive. There's a real sense of energy and movement here, a kind of visual thinking-out-loud. My eye is drawn to the vertical ladder-like structure near the middle of the page. It seems to anchor the chaos, to give it some sense of order, but even that is tentative, unfinished. This piece reminds me a little of Cy Twombly's notebooks, the way he combined writing and drawing in a spontaneous, almost childlike way. It's like art becomes an open conversation, where questions are more important than answers, and ambiguity is something to be embraced.