Rivier met boten aan de waterkant

Cornelis Vreedenburgh made this print of a river with boats at the shore, and look how the scene is built up through tiny marks. The whole thing is really about the surface, the paper. You can see the marks that make up the image, like a pointillist painting done with lines instead of dots. It's a celebration of process: the way the artist worked to build up the scene. Focus on the textures, the way the lines seem to build up the form of the boats and the little waves beneath. The eye isn’t fooled into thinking this is real, yet the work is visually enticing, like the drawings of Cy Twombly, or even some of the more minimal etchings of Whistler. It embraces the beauty of suggestion, showing us the world as a series of marks, and reminding us that art is an ongoing conversation.