Briefkaart aan Philip Zilcken before 1909

This is an old postcard addressed to Philip Zilcken, created by Roger Marx. I can imagine the scene, sometime around the turn of the century in France. The marks are the gestures of bureaucracy: stamps, postmarks, the ghost of the postal system. Think about the artist, though. What was it like to carefully select the card, scrawl out the message, and send it off into the world? Probably a bit of care went into it. The stamp, the handwriting – all these tiny details are like brushstrokes, conveying feeling and intention. It's the same thing with painting - a stroke, a dab, a line. The postcard is a conversation, a form of expression, that has an interesting relationship to painting. Just as artists respond to one another's work over time, these small acts of communication build up, inspiring new ways of seeing and thinking. It's like a kind of slow-motion collaboration. And it leaves so much open to our interpretation, which I love.