Briefkaart aan Philip Zilcken Possibly 1928

This Briefkaart aan Philip Zilcken was composed by Adriaan Pit. I think of this as a conceptual piece. The scriptive marks, the stamp, and the postal markings form a kind of drawing, which, like a Cy Twombly painting, takes the form of written language but exceeds its denotative function to become something else altogether. The layered marks accumulate until the surface becomes rich with all kinds of unintended painterly effects—smudges, splatters, and blurry impressions. I imagine Pit finding something beautiful in the graphic quality of the postal system itself; the way a stamp carries a message across distances, becoming worn and tattered in the process. It reminds me of some of the language experiments of the conceptual art movement. In their own ways, artists are always in conversation with one another across time and space, aren’t they? We take up each other’s discarded ideas, inspiring each other’s creativity and moving painting forward.