Studieblad, onder andere met architectuur 1890 - 1946

Editor: So, this drawing is called "Studieblad, onder andere met architectuur," or "Study Sheet, among other things, with architecture," made by Cornelis Vreedenburgh sometime between 1890 and 1946. It's at the Rijksmuseum. The composition feels very immediate, almost like a page ripped from a sketchbook, a jumble of architectural forms and calculations. What catches your eye? Curator: The layering of geometric shapes and the cityscape hints fascinates me. Look how architectural forms, rendered in graphite, intermingle with almost organic, cell-like shapes and numerical annotations. It is not just the architecture itself that is noteworthy but how such renderings preserve continuity between subjective and objective renderings, even within architectural conventions and urban experience. Do you feel that sense of an almost psychic urban landscape? Editor: Psychic? That's interesting. I mostly saw fragmented planning. Curator: Consider the deeper symbols embedded within cityscapes themselves. Cities accumulate memories, they hold dreams. Even the seemingly random notations here could represent an effort to quantify and control lived experience, and simultaneously to understand or give a framework to the experience. There's an inherent tension between our desire for order and the chaotic reality of urban life, reflected in this sheet. What kind of connection do you see between city life and the geometric shapes as symbolic references to that same thing? Editor: Now that you point it out, the cell-like shapes feel like maps of growth or... divisions, maybe even suggesting an organic process trying to emerge from the architectural structure? I guess the page does capture something beyond simple sketches. Curator: Exactly. It's in this visual dance between geometric and the organic that the work reveals something. A constant tension, an ongoing dialogue within our perception of urban space and even in psychological mapping. Editor: Thanks, I hadn't considered how much the personal could be contained in a seemingly technical drawing!