Brief aan Mien Cambier van Nooten 1912 - 1940

Curator: This delicate drawing is a letter by Dick Ket, dating from sometime between 1912 and 1940. It's entitled "Brief aan Mien Cambier van Nooten," and it's currently held in the Rijksmuseum collection. Primarily executed in pen and ink on paper, it has a textual quality due to its medium. Editor: My first impression? It's overwhelmingly intimate. There’s a raw, almost frantic energy in the handwriting. The density of the text, crammed onto what appears to be a small piece of paper, feels claustrophobic. Curator: Exactly. The visual impact is inseparable from the written content. Ket's handwriting, looping and occasionally obscured, gives us insight into his psychological state. It embodies a particular aesthetic, a form of private language which arguably represents the spirit of the epoch that produced so much correspondence: one of urgency, distance and reliance on the written word. Editor: And letters have always served as tangible pieces of our broader socio-political fabric: consider their roles in disseminating ideologies, relaying cultural customs and mores, or functioning as acts of both propaganda and resistance during wars and movements of political unrest. Here, one might read a desperate attempt at preserving connections despite constraints of distance and circumstance. Curator: Precisely. We're looking at an unvarnished glimpse into Ket's internal world, laden with unspoken concerns. The letter itself serves as both the art and its message. It gives us direct, unmediated access into a private moment in the past. Editor: You are so right! I realize I'm moved by the knowledge that something as seemingly ephemeral as a handwritten letter on a small sheet can serve as such a time capsule. It underscores the immense social power within tangible objects.