Notities 1890 - 1946

Curator: Standing here, contemplating this sheet of paper filled with ink notations, gives me a kind of nostalgic stillness. Editor: Indeed, it’s titled “Notities,” created sometime between 1890 and 1946 by Cornelis Vreedenburgh. It resides here at the Rijksmuseum, and I can’t help but see it as a microcosm of the social structures tied into Dutch colonialism at the time. Curator: Colonialism? How so? I simply read scattered jottings, like a shopping list, or perhaps notes towards a poem. All those lovely looping letters almost turn into abstract designs… quite elegant! Editor: Well, consider the fragment that reads “Van Houten’s original hull”. Coenraad Van Houten, yes, the inventor of Dutch-process chocolate. And underneath that the text states WEESP HOLLAND! Those delicious treats were absolutely funded by colonialism; cocoa beans exploited from plantations on colonized land and processed in Holland. These notations speak of consumer products embedded in exploitative labor. Curator: You're suggesting the seemingly innocent "chocolate très fin" has dark undertones, it being a symbol of global power structures? How disturbing! Suddenly this scribbled paper feels… weighted. Editor: Exactly. Vreedenburgh perhaps innocently jotted this down, but as present-day observers, we can read it as an uncomfortable commentary of this bitter economic system. It encourages reflection and reminds us nothing exists in a vacuum. Curator: The ghost of industry clinging to such dainty handwriting; what a twist! My perspective’s utterly shifted. Thank you for drawing that to my attention. Editor: My pleasure. And that, in a nutshell, is how art continues to provoke.