Gezicht op de Nieuwezijds Kolk te Amsterdam 1912 - 1919

George Hendrik Breitner made this drawing of the Nieuwezijds Kolk in Amsterdam with a pencil, and look at the way he is thinking through the image! It feels as though he’s searching for something, not trying to copy what’s in front of him. The thing that grabs me is the materiality of the pencil marks on the page. Look at the directness of each line, laid bare! There’s no hiding here; the image builds itself up from a collection of thoughts and afterthoughts. That dark jagged line going straight up through the middle – it’s the spine of the image. Everything is worked out in relation to this. You can almost see him thinking, a process made visible through these lines. Like with Morandi, the beauty is not in the subject, but the space created, and the feeling that marks can evoke when we look closely.