Annotaties c. 1915 - 1921

Willem Witsen made this piece, Annotaties, at an unknown date with some kind of pen or pencil, and it just looks like a page torn from a notebook. The thing I love about writing as art is that the messiness is so apparent. It’s the opposite of trying to paint something to look real. The smudges, the scratch outs, the inconsistencies in pressure, it all becomes part of the texture. Look at the way the letters crowd together. It is almost claustrophobic, like they are unsure of themselves, like they are reluctant to be on show. Then there are the longer looping strokes which suggest a real confidence, they’re like flourishes, signatures almost. I think it’s like Cy Twombly, just scribbles and marks but somehow very refined. It's all about the conversation between intention and accident, and the way that art is never really finished, it just keeps going, changing, and surprising us.