Notities 1890 - 1946

Editor: This is a page from "Notities," created by Cornelis Vreedenburgh sometime between 1890 and 1946. It's a drawing and collage made with pencil and paper, and it's held at the Rijksmuseum. The writing all over it makes me think it's some kind of personal sketchbook page or something like that. It’s chaotic, almost like looking at someone’s thoughts directly. What do you see in this work? Curator: This image is a fascinating glimpse into the mind. The scattered notes, addresses, and names suggest a network of connections – both literal, as in places and people the artist knew, but also a web of association within Vreedenburgh’s memory. Note the handwritten date. Such elements evoke cultural memory – do they resonate beyond the personal? Editor: I think so? Because these are addresses or locations, anyone from the time could maybe have had some contact with these people or been to those places. Curator: Exactly. And each name, each location, is itself a symbol loaded with social and personal meaning of that moment. Consider "Kanaalstraat 50," that address might have signified something different in the late 19th or early 20th century than it does today. Don’t you wonder what significance this place carried then? Is it a symbol of progress, maybe related to Dutch industry? It is fascinating to note how artists select, preserve, and re-present the ephemera of daily existence and thereby create visual and symbolic richness. Editor: That’s a good point, I hadn't thought about specific streets being symbolically important at certain moments in time. It makes you wonder what these scribbles meant to the artist, and how much of that we can even understand today. Curator: Indeed. And even those things we can no longer know add to the feeling of mystery! The composition becomes like a relic – something we discover with incomplete knowledge, forcing us to reflect on what the images have held, what the images might reveal, and what ultimately will remain forever elusive.