Abklatsch van de potloodtekening op pagina 24 c. 1910 - 1915

This piece, "Abklatsch van de potloodtekening op pagina 24" is by Willem Witsen, and the title suggests it was made with a pencil drawing. It looks as though Witsen has taken a rubbing from a pencil drawing on the page before, the marks are very faint and textural with the white of the paper very visible. Look closely and you can see an area to the left with some darker marks made by a stick of graphite. This ghostly quality reminds us that artmaking is often about process. It’s a record of doing, not just a picture of something. This piece has a wonderfully ambiguous quality, somewhere between representation and abstraction. A lot of us think of art as being about answers and clear statements, but actually, I think it’s way more interesting when things are left open. Think of artists like Gerhard Richter or even Agnes Martin, people who embrace the blurry and the indefinite. It suggests art is more of a conversation, less of a lecture.