Man met die zonlicht opvangt met een optisch instrument 1900 - 1903

This is a drawing by Antoon Derkinderen; a man catching sunlight with an optical instrument, sketched with graphite on paper. There’s an effort to observe and record, but with a kind of wonky, tender touch, as if the artist is thinking through the subject as he’s drawing. The lines are delicate, almost tentative, and exist to place the figure into the composition. What I like is the looseness, the freedom from needing to be perfect. Look at the diagram of the instrument, suspended above the figure, it’s not quite right, but it doesn’t matter. The energy of the piece is in the gesture, the lightness of touch. I think of other artists who use drawing to explore ideas, like William Kentridge. It's about process and the joy of seeing, rather than a finished product. It’s art as research, embracing the incomplete and ambiguous.