Briefkaart aan Willem Bogtman before 1925

Editor: This is "Briefkaart aan Willem Bogtman" or "Postcard to Willem Bogtman", created by Richard Nicolaüs Roland Holst before 1925. It's a drawing on paper using a pen. It looks like a handwritten note on an old postcard. What can you tell me about this artwork? Curator: The medium is the message here. We see pen on paper, mass-produced stationery, but filled with the artist's hand. Consider the act of writing itself – the labor of crafting each word. Roland Holst consciously chose this accessible format, the postcard, to communicate with Willem Bogtman, likely a fellow artist. How does the immediacy of this format affect the art and communication between them? Editor: I guess using a postcard makes the message more direct and personal. It feels different than a formal letter. The mass production, even then, makes me wonder what the cost of materials were back then. Curator: Precisely! Look at the postal stamp and the printed text, juxtaposed against the intimate, hand-written message. This tension between mass production and individual expression is central. It prompts questions: Who had access to these materials? How did the burgeoning postal system impact artistic exchange and patronage? What does it say about artistic hierarchy, the 'high art' and 'low craft' designations that these kinds of works destabilize? Editor: So by choosing something like a postcard, Roland Holst challenged existing hierarchies? I'd never considered the postcard as a medium for thinking about larger materialist questions like these. Curator: Indeed. We see it as mundane, but it's tied to material culture, class, and even artistic expression. Editor: I see how understanding the materiality gives a new perspective to an old note. Thanks.