Brief aan Philip Zilcken Possibly 1911

This letter to Philip Zilcken was written in 1911 by J. Doorman, with a fountain pen, or perhaps a steel nib. Look how the ink pools in certain areas and thins out in others. You can almost see his hand moving across the page, the pressure he applied, the way the pen dragged ever so slightly. The writing is an artifact of a specific moment, a record of a conversation that exists in a particular time and place. In this respect it's like a painting. See the sweep of Doorman’s signature, the way the J loops back on itself, and the confident line beneath his name. It’s a gesture, a performative act. Letters like this remind me of the work of Cy Twombly. Twombly was also interested in mark-making as a kind of language, a way of communicating that bypassed traditional forms of representation. Both of them invite us to consider the relationship between writing, gesture, and the very act of communication.