Conceptbrief aan onbekend 1918

This undated work, Conceptbrief aan onbekend, by Jan Veth, now at the Rijksmuseum, looks like a field of marks. The pen has danced and skittered and stuttered across the page, laying down a complex and highly idiosyncratic pattern. You can almost feel the artist's hand moving, his thoughts racing. Was he trying to capture a fleeting idea, a half-formed notion? What kind of pressure was he applying to the page? I imagine him hunched over, the nib scratching away, as he tried to corral his thoughts. It reminds me that writing can be a lot like painting – a process of layering, erasing, and revising. In both disciplines, we are trying to find form for our interior landscape. Veth’s work is of its time but also feels really contemporary. It's an exchange, a kind of call and response. It's a way of trying to get to the bottom of something, of wrestling with our uncertainties.