Kalenderblad voor december 1912 met twee witte kalkoenen 1911

Theo van Hoytema made this calendar page for December 1912 with lithography; a stone was drawn on, etched, and then printed. I bet it was one of many for the whole year. The image is printed in a simple palette of greens, grays, and browns. It’s so curious to see these sleepy white turkeys at the top, almost like puffy clouds amongst the fir trees, and then again at the bottom as if the weather has turned fowl. It's an image about the holidays, of course, but it’s also an image about the birds and the bees, or at least birds and trees! Van Hoytema, like many artists, obviously loved looking at other things. I can imagine him looking at Japanese prints and the woodcuts of his contemporaries, like Gauguin, and saying to himself, "I can do that!” It's like a painter’s conversation across time, an exchange of ideas. I love the embodied expression here, and the ambiguity, which allows for multiple interpretations.