Schetsboek LV met 21 bladen c. 1886 - 1934

This sketchbook with 21 pages was made by Isaac Israels sometime in his life, but we don’t know when. It’s just got that simple ochre cover, and you can see the trace of where someone, presumably Isaac, wrote ‘LV’ in the top right. The material of this object gives it all of its meaning, doesn’t it? That stain there, the way the purple spine is ever so slightly faded, like the memory of something. When you see a sketchbook like this, you understand artmaking as a process, something that is transient. The texture of the book’s cover has a quality that stops short of being tactile, yet you can't help but want to touch it, to understand the object’s history through your fingertips. Think about this book as a moment in time. Like those sketchbooks that belonged to Van Gogh. It’s not just about the drawing, but the life lived around it. Art, like life, embraces ambiguity.