Kalenderblad voor januari 1913 met pronkende witte pauw 1912

This calendar for January 1913, by Theo van Hoytema, stages a face-off between a peacock and some mice. I can just picture Van Hoytema, with his lithographic crayon in hand, carefully hatching those tiny, controlled strokes. It's fascinating how he divides the composition into three distinct registers. The peacock’s display fills the top panel with radiating lines that almost vibrate, don't they? And then there’s the calendar grid itself, so orderly, framed by these abstracted organic forms. At the bottom, you see the mice, rendered with such detail amid a geometric jumble, almost like an Escher print. I imagine Van Hoytema was interested in contrasts. He’s playing with abstraction and figuration, order and chaos, the grand and the humble. You can sense the influence of Art Nouveau in the sinuous lines and stylized natural forms. It feels very connected to the aesthetic concerns of the time, where artists were trying to find a new visual language that could capture the complexities of modern life. It’s as if he were saying, ‘Here’s how we mark time, but time, like nature, is both structured and wild.’