Abklatsch van de krijttekening op pagina 42 1875 - 1934

Isaac Israels made this transferred chalk drawing, with the title Abklatsch van de krijttekening op pagina 42, some time before 1934. It’s like a ghost of an image, a rubbing or a print taken from another drawing. You can almost see the residue of the creative process itself, as if the energy of the original marks has been captured in this fainter, more ethereal version. The chalk is light and powdery. I’m really drawn to the way it sits on the surface, almost like dust. The marks are blurry, smudged, and vague. There is a dense concentration of powdery medium on the left, in contrast with the more delicate and sparse marks on the right, connected by thin lines. It's like he's showing us the mechanics of seeing, how we move from focus to peripheral vision. This piece reminds me of Cy Twombly, in the sense that the sketch is as important as the outcome, where art embraces the beauty of the imperfect, the unfinished, and the multiple possibilities of an idea.