Brief aan Philip Zilcken Possibly 1907

This letter to Philip Zilcken, in what looks like ink on paper, is all about the immediacy of communication, or maybe its failure. The handwriting, with its loops and leans, feels both personal and urgent, like a sketch dashed off in the heat of the moment. You can almost feel the pen scratching across the page. The letter describes a series of missed connections: a postcard taking too long, a telegram sent in haste. Each word, each stroke of the pen, becomes a record of the artist's effort to reach out, to touch someone through the barrier of distance and time. It reminds me of Cy Twombly and his scribbled paintings, where the act of writing becomes a kind of abstract expression. Ultimately, art, like this letter, is a way of reaching out, of trying to connect with others across the gaps that separate us. It's a messy, imperfect process, full of delays and misunderstandings, but it's also deeply human.