Brief aan Philip Zilcken before 1917

Here we see a letter to Philip Zilcken, made by mevrouw Joseph Romieu, but really, it looks like a drawing. The dense layering of script suggests the flow of thought, and how writing itself can become a form of automatic mark-making. The violet ink has a ghostly, translucent quality, especially where the lines overlap and create denser pockets of color. Notice how the looping strokes and repetitive forms create an all-over texture, like a field of energy. Each word is a gesture, each line a vibration. You can imagine the hand moving across the paper, almost possessed. Look at the phrase "en tout cas, fe Deus" - the letters trailing off, becoming lighter and more hesitant. This is art as a record of a lived moment, a material trace of thought, feeling, and the sheer act of communication. You can feel traces of Cy Twombly or even a touch of the Dadaists in this work. It really makes you think about the way ideas and art cross paths through time.