Briefkaart aan Philip Zilcken Possibly 1907

This Carte Pneumatique to Philip Zilcken is by Henrietta Buhot. It’s an ephemeral piece – a message dashed off and sent. I imagine Buhot with her pen, quickly making marks. Look at the confidence of the script, how the ink flows. It reminds me of Cy Twombly’s nervous energy, the way he lets his hand dance across the canvas. You can feel the urgency, the desire to communicate something quickly. It makes me think about the difference between a letter and an email, the way we used to put so much thought into every word, because it was going to be there, on paper, forever. Now, we just dash things off, hit send, and forget about them. I wonder who Philip Zilcken was, and what they were to each other. I like to think of all these artists sending each other postcards, building a little community through the mail.