Book about the paintings of the Dutch painter Kees Goudzwaard (* 1958 Utrecht, NL).

"Just as painting is a way of speaking about reality which can, if so desired, find its way towards elucidation and/or poeticisation by the most varied and divergent pathways, there are very different ways of speaking about painting. (Art history as a whole largely coincides with the history of this 'speaking', of the various 'readings' that are used by the 'speakers'.)" (DIETER ROELSTRAETE)

"Painting - the process, the result and of course the actual painter-as-artist - 'speaks' to us and appeals to us (which is, incidentally, something quite different from 'communicating') in a Babel-like confusion of accents and tongues, in tones that are both literally and figuratively high and low, at times clear and at times barely comprehensible, at times archaic and at times as though it were thieves' cant from the future, slow and staccato or plunging headlong. What we, the public, 'hear' in painting, what we detect or perceive in the language of paintings, literally accept as 'true', is the subject matter of the language of art history - and it is precisely this speaking about painting that I want to discuss (among other things!) in this brief reflection on the work of Kees Goudzwaard." (DIETER ROELSTRAETE)

Text in Englisch and Dutch by Dieter Roelstraete.