Briefkaart aan Pieter Haverkorn van Rijsewijk Possibly 1906 - 1911

This postcard by F. Ritter, addressed to Pieter Haverkorn van Rijsewijk, is like a little time capsule. You can see how the ink of the stamp bleeds a bit into the paper, a beautiful accident, and then there's the hand-written script, so elegant, addressing the director of Museum Boijmans. The surface of the card, now aged and with an almost velvety texture, tells its own story, it looks so smooth. It's funny, isn't it, how something so simple can feel so loaded, so expressive? Look at the stamp on the top right and how it overlaps with another stamp underneath. It's so casual, so unplanned. I guess that’s like artmaking, there’s a plan but you have to let the materials do their thing. For me, seeing this makes me think of On Kawara's date paintings, where the act of marking time becomes the art itself. It's about holding onto a moment, even if that moment is fleeting. What’s so great about art is that it gets us thinking about all kinds of things, all at once.