Briefkaart aan Willem Bogtman Possibly 1922

Curator: Gosh, this humble little card carries such weight somehow. Editor: Indeed. This is "Briefkaart aan Willem Bogtman," likely from 1922. It’s a pen drawing on paper by Richard Nicolaüs Roland Holst. It resides here at the Rijksmuseum. The text is mostly hand-lettering, an address and stamp mostly. Curator: Right? At first glance, I just thought "postcard"—beige and unassuming. But there's something so beautifully direct in the hand-written nature that makes it so special! Editor: Holst's attention to the aesthetics of everyday communication provides a window into his social relationships. Before the internet and even ubiquitous telephones, this was how dialogue transpired. Curator: It is amazing how direct we were. A connection between him and… whom was it? Bogtman? What was their relationship? What about the urgency of a hand-written message? It would be intriguing if we could look into who that individual was and understand why he felt a sense of urgency to drop it in the mail. Did this connection alter the art world in some form? Editor: It begs the questions of class and mobility. Who had the leisure and resources to send postcards versus the cost of travel? Who decides to correspond formally with art? Such postcards could influence both artistic careers and artistic tastes in general. We, as curators, are guilty of being enthralled by these types of things, really. Curator: It’s beautiful how this object lets us travel in our minds! Just picturing him hunched over, pen in hand and filled with a sense of something meaningful enough to jot down to send… Ah, that’s wonderful. Thank you for sharing all that knowledge. Editor: Likewise, I love how the act of interpretation breathes new life into the art! These tiny fragments of correspondence open worlds when you ponder the lives that touched them.