Staande figuur c. 1930

Carel Adolph Lion Cachet made this drawing with ink on paper, and it's now housed at the Rijksmuseum. It is a figure, maybe standing, maybe reclining, or even floating. The making feels immediate, a kind of thinking through drawing. The beauty of this drawing is in its ambiguity, its openness. The marks are spare, and looping and yet they suggest form, volume. Look at the head – it’s just a mass of scribbled lines, an almost violent concentration of marks, but somehow it conveys the density and complexity of a human head. The body is just a few sweeping lines, but it gives us a sense of weight and presence. It reminds me of Twombly's work, where drawing becomes a kind of dance, a way of capturing movement and energy on paper. The whole thing has a lightness to it, a kind of provisional quality. Nothing is fixed or certain, and that’s what makes it so alive. It’s a reminder that art is not about perfect representation, but about the process of seeing and feeling and thinking.