Algemeen Handelsblad Possibly 1940 - 1945

This broadsheet, the Algemeen Handelsblad, was made on May 11, 1940. It’s a newspaper, so first and foremost it is communicating information, reporting events as they unfold, or at least as they are perceived to be unfolding at that moment. I love to imagine the person setting the type. I wonder if they knew as they were printing it that the information was already old news? Or worse, misinformation? I wonder if they were thinking about how the form and content of the paper conveyed something urgent and deeply important to the reader. The ink is so black and sits so decisively on the white of the page, organized in neat, dense columns. Each article is a kind of gesture. The layout of the paper reminds me of a painting by Mondrian, but instead of blocks of primary color, we have blocks of tightly packed text, and an endless, shifting space of interpretation. I think of other artists who have worked with newspapers in their art, and I see how art is a constant conversation across time.