Studies c. 1905

Curator: Stepping into this room, you’re greeted by "Studies," a work by Carel Adolph Lion Cachet, dating back to around 1905. It's a pencil drawing on paper currently held here at the Rijksmuseum. What strikes you first? Editor: Honestly? A sense of someone's restless mind at play. It's like a peek into a beautiful, organized chaos. I see shapes, numbers… lists maybe? There is a practical beauty to it that is somehow captivating, would you agree? Curator: Precisely. There’s an intimacy to a sketchbook, isn’t there? Like witnessing thoughts take shape in real time. It has such a raw, vulnerable presence. What symbols do you latch onto? What speaks to your intuitive experience as a viewer? Editor: The numbers dance out, really. A glimpse into Cachet's calculations, perhaps sketches of mundane shopping lists? What story do we have here – notes like 'gold', ingredients or prices? They're like fragmented runes suggesting some hidden story beneath it all, an early 20th century encoding of sorts, don’t you think? It also draws my eye towards geometry too, look at how the angles create a flow despite the randomness of the itemisation on the page. Curator: Interesting. I can follow you on that. Maybe it is a series of abstract patterns too; like subconscious echoes in the language of geometric forms of the early modernists and those of Cubism just taking off at the time. Editor: Absolutely! It transcends being simply a utilitarian notebook page. There's an almost dreamlike quality to the juxtaposition of hard numbers and almost hazy geometric renderings. The cultural memory encoded is in how sketches function, perhaps the collective unconscious in how ideas, especially creative, sprout? Curator: Indeed! The 'Studies', as Cachet has titled it, allows a quiet reflection on the artist’s working method and mental landscape. Editor: I concur. Thanks for guiding my perspective to allow a fuller understanding, almost felt like reading a personal diary.