Brief aan Mien Cambier van Nooten Possibly 1937

Dick Ket wrote this letter to Mien Cambier van Nooten in 1938. It's mostly writing, but the way he puts the words on the page, the letterforms, it’s all mark-making really. It’s like a drawing with words, the density and rhythm create a visual texture. I love how the writing fills the space, dense and even, but full of variation when you look closely. The ink is dark, but thin, so the paper shows through, giving it an airy, open feel. It's a personal gesture frozen in time, like a fingerprint. I'm drawn to the loops and curves in his handwriting; they remind me of his still life paintings with their rounded forms and tight compositions. It has something of the contained feeling of his painting, the density, the feeling of airlessness. This reminds me a little of Cy Twombly’s scrawled drawings, even though Ket's style is tighter and more controlled. But both artists use handwriting as a form of personal expression, blurring the lines between writing and drawing, sense and nonsense. What would Ket think of Twombly, I wonder?