Briefkaart aan Philip Zilcken Possibly 1912

This postcard to Philip Zilcken, by Abraham Seyne Kok, has such an ephemeral quality. You can almost feel the act of correspondence as a kind of performance. There's something so material about this little rectangle of card; the residue of rubber stamps, the light olive green ink, the way the handwriting loops and leans. The stamp in the top right corner, a denomination of one-and-a-half cents, features a regal image surrounded by delicate ornamental details. Imagine someone carefully tearing this from a larger sheet. The postal markings, the date, the address – all these elements construct a sense of a very specific time and place, but also, they evoke the universality of communication. This card has a similar feeling to the work of someone like Cy Twombly, in the way both artists use handwriting and mark-making to create a sense of gesture and movement, blurring the lines between writing and drawing. Like all art, this postcard invites us to contemplate the many possible layers of meaning embedded within a simple form.