Abklatsch van een gezicht op de Voetboogstraat te Amsterdam 1908

This indistinct sketch of a face on Voetboogstraat in Amsterdam was made by George Hendrik Breitner with graphite on paper. The whole thing has this ghostly, smudged quality, like a memory fading away, or the residue of something that was once there. You can see the way Breitner worked the graphite into the page, almost like he was trying to scrub the image into existence. It’s as if the paper itself is breathing, inhaling and exhaling the grey tones. Look at the upper-left corner, how the graphite is concentrated, almost a dark mass. It's like the weight of the whole scene is pressing down on that one spot. And then, these fainter lines emerge out of the fog and suggest a building and a street scene. Breitner reminds me a bit of Degas, in the way he captured these fleeting moments of urban life. Both artists were more interested in capturing the feeling of a place, than in creating a photographic representation. Ultimately art embraces ambiguity, inviting us to find our own meaning in the marks and gestures on the page.