Brief aan Philip Zilcken Possibly 1907

Albert Neuhuys made this letter to Philip Zilcken with blue ink on paper; it's now held at the Rijksmuseum. Look at how the ink bleeds slightly into the paper, like watercolor soaking into cotton. I love how Neuhuys's handwriting sprawls across the page like a vine, each word leaning into the next. I wonder what he was thinking, scratching out those words, the nib of his pen dancing on the page. It feels so intimate, like eavesdropping on a private conversation. And the act of writing itself—the pressure of the pen, the flow of the ink—it's almost like drawing, right? It reminds me of Cy Twombly's scribbled paintings, all those lines and loops that seem to capture a thought in mid-flight. Artists, we're all just trying to make sense of the world, one mark at a time, and we’re in this ongoing exchange of ideas across time, inspiring each other's creativity. I think there’s something liberating about embracing ambiguity and uncertainty, letting a piece have multiple interpretations rather than fixed or definitive readings.