Kalenderblad voor januari 1913 met pronkende witte pauw 1912

Theo van Hoytema made this calendar page for January 1913 with lithographic ink and crayon. Look at the peacock, with its ghostly white presence against a fan of fading plumage. It's like he conjured it from mist with the side of his crayon, dragging the color across the stone to create a texture that dissolves and reforms. This work is all about surface, the way the crayon sits on the paper, slightly raised. The granular quality of the marks gives the image a strange depth, almost like you could run your fingers over it and feel the passing of time. I'm drawn to the soft focus of the feathers, they're not quite there, and yet they evoke the feeling of a peacock in full display. There's a kinship here with Odilon Redon, who also used lithography to evoke dreamlike imagery. Like Redon, van Hoytema embraces the ambiguity of the medium, creating a work that invites us to wander through its veiled surfaces.