Brief aan anoniem 1878 - 1941

This letter by Emile Bernard is written in French, in blue ink, on graph paper, and it feels like a peek into the artist's inner thoughts. Imagine him sitting, pen in hand, pouring out words onto the page, a stream of consciousness flowing directly from mind to paper. You can feel the artist’s presence, the weight of his thoughts pressing down through the ink. It’s like he’s wrestling with ideas, trying to capture something elusive with each stroke of the pen. What might he have been thinking, feeling, as he wrote these words? Perhaps grappling with love, mortality, or the creative process itself. The act of writing becomes a form of mark-making, not unlike drawing or painting. Bernard's use of language reminds me that art is a conversation, an exchange of ideas across time. We are all, in our own way, writing letters to each other. We respond to each other's gestures and create new ones in turn.