Ontwerp voor een prijslijst 1900 - 1902

This is Ernst Maximilian Büttinghausen's pencil sketch, "Ontwerp voor een prijslijst," where he's mapping out a design for a price list. The quick, light marks are so great because they show Büttinghausen thinking on paper. You can see the ghost of a line here and there, a little correction, a bit of flourish. It is all process. Look at the way he builds up the forms with layers of lines, suggesting depth and volume. I'm drawn to the way he renders the central panel, those loose, almost scribbled lines create a kind of vibrating energy. The texture feels like an invitation. I love that the materiality of the sketch is front and center. It's a reminder that art is fundamentally about the process, the journey, and the way marks, however tentative, can communicate so much. Artists like Cy Twombly come to mind, in the way he also used line to explore the boundaries between drawing and writing. Ultimately, this sketch reminds us that art is an ongoing experiment, an open-ended conversation with materials, ideas, and the world around us.