Brief aan Philip Zilcken Possibly 1911 - 1918

This little postcard, "Brief aan Philip Zilcken," was sent from Paris in 1911 by M.Ch. Faure. It's a letter, really, a flurry of cursive in what looks like dark ink. The thing I love about handwriting is that it's so performative. Look at these lines! The way the ink bleeds and pools, you can almost hear the scratch of the pen and imagine the pressure of the hand that made them. Like you're right there in the room, watching someone put thoughts to paper. See that ‘J’ in the second line? The way it loops and curls almost obscures the letter, that’s Faure adding a little extra flourish to the movement. It’s a very expressive kind of mark. It reminds me of Cy Twombly in a way, all these scribbles accumulating until they almost cancel themselves out. But that’s the thing about art, isn’t it? You start with a single gesture and then it leads to another, and another, and before you know it, you've made something that didn't exist before. Sometimes it's illegible, but it’s still a record of a human touch.