Lony praat met een man in een deuropening before 1954

Hans Borrebach made this illustration of Lony talking to a man in a doorway using ink and paint. It is, in essence, a cartoon. The linear quality of the heavy black ink delineates forms in a crisp and efficient way. The real interest for me lies in the context of this kind of work. It is a modest, everyday item of visual culture, made for mass consumption. The artist has fully embraced the techniques of commercial art. But this image is also carefully composed and drawn, in its own way. Borrebach was employed to make comic strips, which were a new and growing market at the time. This type of work was looked down upon by the world of fine art. And yet, the techniques and visual styles are not so different from those found in high modernism. So perhaps we should reconsider that distinction.