Annotaties c. 1906 - 1923

Curator: So, we're looking at "Annotaties" by George Hendrik Breitner, dating from around 1906 to 1923. It's a mixed-media piece, primarily using drawing, ink, and collage on paper and textile. Editor: It feels intensely private, like glimpsing a secret language. All the handwritten text, the aged paper, create an incredible sense of intimacy. It's not overtly beautiful, but strangely compelling. Curator: Breitner, as you probably know, was very interested in capturing fleeting moments, the essence of the everyday. I think of this page as being a receptacle for daily noticings, like keeping a diary, with a lot of textual annotation and material assemblage. Editor: Definitely. And it evokes a real sense of time, too. Handwritten text always feels heavier with significance to me than typed text, you know? You can see the very hand of the artist. What does the typography itself suggest? Curator: I see something a little chaotic, actually. The various scripts suggest that this was collected over time, that he'd just use the page as he found it. There's a tension between his neat handwriting and the found ephemera pasted around the notebook page. The collage fragments appear like souvenirs. The overall image points to this sense of someone's creative process right on the paper. Editor: It's intriguing how handwriting becomes a visual symbol in itself. The faded ink, the differing styles, they all create a story, an aura of the period. Like each type style or business name shows off their specific eras, overlapping onto each other like strata. Do you find an aspect particularly evocative, thinking about what might not be there too? Curator: Well, knowing that Breitner was working during a time of tremendous social and artistic change definitely influences how I perceive it. Each notation shows a specific detail about life in early 20th century Amsterdam, but the combination of materials turns the whole notebook page into something larger, which captures his inner state, also. Editor: Absolutely, this makes me realize how everyday scraps of paper or handwritten words become incredibly powerful as time passes. You realize there is a ghost within the text and within the selection, revealing some shared cultural memory. Curator: Seeing "Annotaties," has reframed my perspective on the nature of sketches and annotations. They seem less rigid and more like the scattered clues within ourselves. Editor: For me, it's deepened my appreciation for the symbolism embedded in the way people communicated, their selection in that method of marking. How each mark or label might be filled with meaning that shifts and accrues over time.