Brief aan Philip Zilcken Possibly 1909

This letter to Philip Zilcken, made by W.J.G. van Meurs, is all about the process, right? You see how the ink kinda pools in places, the pressure of the nib varies, and the whole thing has a forward momentum. You can tell he’s really thinking as he’s writing, almost like sketching in real-time. I love the materiality of this piece. You can almost feel the paper, it seems quite thin, and the ink is a lovely dark brown. I’m struck by the way the text cascades down the page. It's not perfectly even or spaced, which brings a lovely, relaxed rhythm to the page, almost like a musical score. And then there's that signature, with a flourish of the 'W' and the confident 'Meurs' beneath. This reminds me a little of Cy Twombly's scrawled paintings, where the act of writing becomes a form of drawing, and the message is as much in the gesture as in the words themselves. Art's like a big conversation, always echoing and riffing on what came before. It’s a reminder that art isn't about answers, it’s about the questions we ask along the way.