Certificate (army discharge) 1935 - 1942

John Koehl, an artist born in 1855, made this artwork, titled Certificate (army discharge), with unknown media, and the date is also unknown. What strikes me first is the color palette, like aged parchment, giving the piece a sense of history, or maybe even a kind of faded glory. The texture of the paper, the way it’s creased and worn, it tells a story of its own. You can almost feel the fragility of the material, the way it’s been handled and preserved over time. The precision of the text, the calligraphy feels both formal and deeply personal. There's a contrast between the official language and the human element, the document’s physical presence. I keep coming back to the signature, it seems very gestural, like a quick flick of the wrist. I wonder about the hand that wrote it, the weight of the words being penned. It makes me think of Cy Twombly, the way he combined text and abstraction in his paintings, or maybe even Rauschenberg's use of found objects. It’s like art is always in conversation with itself, echoing and riffing off the past.