Gordijn en een architectuurstudie c. 1905 - 1906

Carel Adolph Lion Cachet made this study of a curtain and architecture, probably in pencil, sometime in his life. When I look at this, I think about the tentative quality of lines when you’re trying to figure something out. What was he trying to figure out? The way a curtain falls? How it relates to a window? It’s all very light touch, a testing of the waters. There’s a shorthand here; he's got a lot to work out. The artist is trying to represent architecture with these straight lines and these numbers. The contrast of the straight architecture with the folds of the fabric, the soft curves of the curtain. There's a tension here between the order of architecture and the softness of the interior. It's like a dance between intention and accident, control, and letting go. It all reminds me that art is like a conversation, an exchange of ideas across time.