Briefkaart aan Willem Bogtman before 1926

This card was sent by Richard Nicolaüs Roland Holst, an artist who made his mark at the turn of the century. Look at the script, made with a very fine nib – the ink almost bleeds into the page. It's really beautiful, isn't it? I can imagine him writing it quickly, just so he could get back to his work. The card has an intimacy to it, like a peek into the life of this artist. We see the way the words fill the page, how the ink sits on the surface of the paper. It makes you wonder who Willem Bogtman was, and what their relationship was like. Was he a close friend, a fellow artist, or maybe just an acquaintance? You see the postal stamp dated 1924? I like to think of the card as a kind of time capsule, connecting us to a specific moment in history and the lives of these two men. The stamp gives this historical object a sense of life, bringing to mind the other postal art of the Fluxus movement, like the mail art of Ray Johnson. Art is so often about connections, isn't it?