Young Woman Writing

by Pierre Bonard (1908)

In his journals, Kafka described the act of writing as a way to disappear completely.

He wrote: “One can never be alone enough when one writes. There can never be enough silence around one when one writes. Even night is not enough.”

This interiority of the writing process is depicted beautifully in Pierre Bonard’s painting of a “young woman writing” (1908). She’s there, but she’s disappeared into her work. Her face is not visible, as she leans over her writing, immersed in thought.

Writing is how we return to ourselves, but also a way in which we can disappear into our thoughts, creating our own worlds.

Pierre Bonnard was a French post-impressionist painter who founded a loosely connected art group known as “Les Nabis” (1888-1900). Their worked marked an important transition point between Impressionism and modernism.

For example, in the work above one can identify an impressionist technique, but the scene is thoroughly modern. Instead of a woman posing with a pen, it is the act of writing itself that is depicted. The subject is not the woman, but the interior process of the writer.

Bonnard often drew such scenes taken directly from his life in Paris. Or, in the words of the French art critic Claude Roger-Marx : “he (Bonnard) catches fleeting poses, steals unconscious gestures, crystallises the most transient expressions"

What I like about this painting is that it reflects a central truth of all writing: which is that in putting pen to paper, we write ourselves into existence.

Or, as Voltaire once wrote: “writing is painting with the voice.”

Julian

Thank you for reading this newsletter! If you’d like to support my writing, please consider becoming a paying subscriber or a founding member. It truly helps me keep this substack open access and free, so that anyone can learn about art. Thank you so much! Click below to sign up today.