Hoofd van Saturnus 1900 - 1903

This sketch of Saturnus, probably from the late 19th or early 20th century, is all about line and writing. It’s an intimate page from a sketchbook, covered in text and a quick drawing of Saturn. You can see the artist, Antoon Derkinderen, figuring things out, making notes, and letting the image emerge. I wonder what he was thinking about? The relationship between Saturn, labour, and pilgrimage. It's like he's using the page as a space to think, the words and image feeding off each other. The head is simply rendered, but you can feel the weight of the idea behind it. It reminds me of the way Cy Twombly combined text and image in his paintings, creating these layered, palimpsestic surfaces. Artists are always in conversation with each other across time, finding new ways to express old ideas. We make marks, then layer new meanings over them, in the studio or in our sketchbooks.