Getallen c. 1887 - 1888

Editor: Here we have "Getallen," a landscape drawing in graphite and pencil on paper by Willem Witsen, created around 1887 or 1888. The texture is what strikes me first, this incredible build-up of smudged graphite. What do you see in this piece from a formal perspective? Curator: Initially, the distribution of value is intriguing. Note the contrast between the hazy, almost ethereal expanse dominating the central plane, contrasted against these seemingly random dense marks in the corners of the sheet. The marks create an unsettling tension—one pole versus many—as if these notations and erasures carry equal visual weight with the 'landscape'. How does that asymmetry strike you? Editor: It feels unbalanced but maybe intentionally so? I’m wondering about those numbers written in the corner—what function do they play in the work? Curator: Precisely. The inclusion of what appear to be numerical calculations redirects our perception, doesn't it? We have to decode those elements like the dark vertical line down the right edge as equal 'content' within the aesthetic arrangement. Consider then, is the essence of the piece an exercise in deconstructing pictorial space through symbolic language, reducing nature to abstract components and notational glyphs? Editor: So, it's less about depicting a scene and more about exploring the fundamentals of art itself. Like questioning what elements make up a picture? Curator: Precisely. Are those smudges land, or the ghost of the idea of land, made material as graphite? How can Witsen explore the ontology of an image using nothing more than dark dust? Editor: It's fascinating to think of the landscape as almost secondary to the abstract elements in this drawing. It really encourages you to see beyond the surface representation. Curator: Indeed. We see an artist less invested in mimetic representation and more concerned with the raw materiality and semiotic play inherent in the act of drawing itself.