Briefkaart aan Philip Zilcken Possibly 1914

This is a briefkaart, a postcard, addressed to Philip Zilcken by Adolphe van Weezel Errens. It’s intriguing how a quickly jotted note can become this thing we look at in a museum! I imagine Errens hunched over his desk, maybe distracted, quickly forming the looping gestures of the handwriting with ink and nib. You can see how the pen presses down in some places, and then lifts up, light as a feather. The whole thing’s kind of a drawing, really – the artist’s hand moving across the surface, guided by the thoughts in his head, and perhaps also by his feelings for the recipient. The stamps and the postmark add another layer of meaning. They remind us that this card was once a real object, traveling through the world, carrying a message from one person to another. Like all painting, it's a message from then to now.