Interieur met een eettafel en zithoek 1919

Editor: We’re looking at "Interieur met een eettafel en zithoek," a pen drawing on paper by Reijer Stolk, from 1919. It's currently held at the Rijksmuseum. My first thought is how geometric it feels, even though it's a sketch. The lines are so deliberate. What do you see in this piece, focusing on the composition itself? Curator: The compositional elements strike me first. Stolk’s deployment of line—consider its weight and direction—creates a spatial paradox. Note how the seemingly incomplete contours define forms, yet simultaneously flatten the perspective. Is it truly an interior, or a study of geometric planes interacting on a two-dimensional surface? Editor: That makes sense. It feels like he’s playing with perspective. Like he is starting with a real space but is abstracting it somehow through line. But what’s the purpose? Curator: Consider the very nature of the modernist style that is indicated. Modernism often rejected representational accuracy in favour of exploring the intrinsic properties of the medium. What effect do you think is achieved here by dispensing with traditional perspective and chiaroscuro, employing the geometric structure you rightly noted? Editor: Perhaps he's stripping away the illusion to reveal the underlying structure, making us conscious of the act of seeing, or even the structure of the domestic space? It feels like a dissection, in a way. Curator: Precisely. He's laying bare the architecture of the image, so that we confront the fundamental elements of spatial representation itself. A table becomes not simply a table but a collection of planes, rendered in light and shadow, existing as a mental construction rather than a mimetic copy. Editor: I hadn't thought of it that way. Focusing on those lines really opens it up, moving away from a literal room into something more abstract and about representation itself. Curator: Indeed. Visual analysis lets us unlock the foundational elements and begin the interpretative work, so our perceptions change and mature.