Category: artists studios

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On Kawara (1932-2014)

On Karawa

On Kawara is one of the most enigmatic of modern artists. Like his forerunner Marcel Duchamp, Kawara retreated from the art scene, avoiding his own exhibition openings and declining to be interviewed, so that his public persona came to be defined solely through his work. But that work itself seems – at first sight – to offer little more reward to biographers. Instead, it methodically and meticulously documents the trajectory of On’s life, without apparent ornament, an art based on ideas rather than aesthetics which sits firmly within the tradition of Conceptual art associated with Joseph Kosuth and Lawrence Weiner. However, the extraordinary duration of Kawara’s process-based projects – one of which, his date-painting series Today, lasted almost fifty years, producing almost 3,000 individual works – and the meditative consistency with which he applied himself to his tasks, sets his oeuvre apart, and links his work to his background in Buddhist and Shinto philosophy. By drawing attention to the minutiae of daily existence, Kawara’s work focuses our attention on the most basic elements of our experience of the world: our location on the planet, and our passage through time.

With projects such as I Got Up and I Am Still Alive – which involved mailing postcards and telegrams to friends and benefactors, at irregular intervals, over several years – On Kawara not only abandoned the artisanal techniques that still defined modern art to some extent in the early 1960s, but, more importantly, outsourced the ‘completion’ of his work to anonymous third parties. In leaving the delivery of his telegrams and postcards, for example – in a sense the final stage of the creative process – to the US postal service and Western Union delivery schedules, On Kawara emphasized the significance of concept over aesthetic form in a far more radical way than modern artists had previously attempted, in line with the most radical tendencies of Conceptual art. For On Kawara contemporaries in Conceptual art please find a nice series of Art & Project publications at www.ftn-books.com

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    Fred Sandback (1943-2003)

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    A very special Minimal artist definitely is Fred Sandback.

    Fred Sandback would stretch lengths of colored yarn taut in a space to make people experience it differently, uniquely, unexpectedly. His ingeniously simple sculptures had no weight or mass, no inside or out.

    He described is work eloquently in his booklet A Children’s Guide to Seeing made to accompany his 1989 exhibition of yarn sculptures at the Houston Contemporary Arts Museum. His words for kids provide illumination for adults:
    We all need a place for play, whether it’s jump rope, baseball, or making a sculpture. I’m lucky enough to have the whole Contemporary Arts Museum in which to build my sculptures that are made out of knitting yarn.

    I need a big space like this because I mean my sculptures to take space and make it into a place—a place that people will move around in and be in.

    Knitting yarn is great for making the proportions, intervals, and shapes that build the places I want to see and to be in. It’s like a box of colored pencils, only I can use it to make a three-dimensional sculpture instead of making a drawing on paper.

    My knitting-yarn sculpture is a somewhat distant cousin to some other string games. Maybe the one that uses the most space is kite flying. But the one that is the oldest, and the most universal, is cat’s cradle. Indians, Eskimos, Bushmen, and many other cultures around the world have had games like cat’s cradle since before anyone can remember.

    Often cat’s cradle is about making a little place—just for yourself, or to share with someone. If you don’t know any of the moves, you can probably learn some from a friend, a relative, or from your mom or dad, if they remember them.

    If you ask the attendant here in the Museum now, he or she will give you some yarn to use while you are here and to take home. Your fingers might do some thinking while you wander around and look at my sculptures.

    And here are a few cat’s cradle ideas.

    Cat’s cradle is nice because you can put it in your pocket when you’re busy with something else, and take it out again when you’re not. Although, as you can see, it’s not so hard to build big things like my sculpture. All it takes is a ball of string. If you were feeling a little adventurous, you could even wrap up your whole house.

    www.ftn-books is fortunate to have some nice Sandback items available

    sandback bottrop a

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    OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

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    Haags Gemeentemuseum ( continued )

    In the mid Eighties , financing the museums in the Netherland required some changes. One of the changes was we looked for cheaper printing possiblilties and found these with a Belgium printer and lithographer. Snoeck Ducaju became one of the new partners of the museum together with de Buck for the lithography. Both have become household names in the printing world, but at that time it was a kind of a gamble, since the distance made it much harder ( only telephone and fax were available). Still the first results were excellent. Just look at these 2 timeless beautiful publications , designed by Donald Janssen and printed by Snoek in 1986 and 1987. Many others would follow but these are still standing out and are proof of the quality publications published in those years.

    Both are available at www.ftn-books.com

     

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    Stephen Gilbert ( 1910-2007)

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    Stephen Gilbert (right, together with Constant)

    Stephen Gilbert (15 January 1910 – 12 January 2007) was a painter and sculptor from Scotland. He was one of the few British artists fully to embrace the avant garde movement in Paris in the 1950s.

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    At one time he even was considered to be one of the members of the COBRA mouvement, but now, some 60 years after COBRA most critics think Gilbert knew the Cobra artists but do not consider him to be one them. Still his paintings and drawings deserve to be appreciated. His almost child like works are close to Cobra, but some of his more abstract works are typical for the end of the Fifties.  It really depends upon the work. Some are great art and others are far from that qualification.  The galerie 1900-2000 tried to push his works into the art market in 1987 with a special Stephen Gilbert exhibition ( catalogue avaiable at www.ftn-books.com), but was not successfull. If you like his works, the works by Stephen Gilbert cab be found at smaller auction houses for still reasonable prices than the great CObra names fetch for thier art.

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    Paul Blanca (1958-2021)

    Paul Blanca

    Last Saturday dutch photographer Paul Blaca died. His body was worn out after years of drug and alcohol abuse. Without Blanca dutch photography would have been half as interesting as it is now. He was self taught and discovered and explored portrait photography in a very special and own way, transforming it and perfecting it into his preferred form of photography.

    the following text comes from the Paul Blanca site:

    Paul Blanca (1958) is a Dutch self-taught photographer who started with a Canon F1 and later switched to a 6×6 cm Haselblad camera. In the 80s he created a series of violent self-portraits inspired by Robert Mapplethorpe (1946 – 1989) and Andres Serrano. Mapplethorpe introduced Blanca into the art world to artists like Grace Jones and Keith Haring stating “Paul Blanca is my only competitor”. Mapplethorpe’s favourite was Blanca’s self-portrait ‘Mother and Son’.

    Hans van Maanen and Erwin Olaf call Paul Blanca the photographer of emotion. That ties in with his work. His self-portraits run like a thread through his overall work. For some things you can’t ask a model. For example, to hit a nail through someone’s hand. And like the self-portrait Mickey Mouse. In which a smiling Mickey Mouse is carved into his back with a thumb up.

    For his series ‘Par la Pluie des Femmes’ women were captured in tears by thinking of their most traumatic experience. When he lived in Spain for 2 years, he stood with his camera at the front of the Spanish bullfighting arena. This resulted in the portfolio Sangre de Toro (Blood of the Bull): silk-screen prints with Bull’s blood.

    In the beginning of the 90s he photographed the facial expression of speedball hookers for the series ‘Wit en Bruin’. Speedball is a very dangerous mixture of cocaine with heroin or morphine and has a substantial risk of overdose.

    In the series ‘Deformation’ he was inspired by Rob Leer‘s SM scene. Models mutulated by fishline and hanging in the air, supported by the same fishline. This series was made for Amsterdam International Fashion Week (AIFW), in collaboration with fashion designer Hester Slaman, and exposed in Apart Gallery Amsterdam.

    With the series ‘Kristal’ and ‘Mi Matties’ he had a double exhibition at Witzenhausen Gallery in 2008. Kristal is a series about the sweet and the bitter in relation with women. Presented in Witzenhausen Gallery Amsterdam in 2008. Mi Matties (my friends) is a series made in one of the neighborhoods of old Amsterdam. The portraits show young men who are presenting themselves as a group, sort of a gang.

    In 2014 he created a self-portrait ‘Mother and Son’, 32 years after the first self-portrait, where he carries his mother, just like he carried her to bed for 4 years because she couldn‘t walk.

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    Klaus Staeck (1938)

     

    I always thought that Klaus Staeck was just a publisher, but now i have learned him not only being an art publisher but also a graphic artist and lawyer. His bond with Joseph Beuys and a political engagemnet is well know, but him being an artist by himself not. It is always nice to encounter a Staeck publiction. Always on the border of being an artist multiple. www.ftn-books.com has several Klaus Staeck publications available

    Klaus Staeck grew up in the East German city of Bitterfeld. After passing the abitur in 1956 he moved to the West German city of Heidelberg where he lives down to the present day.

    From 1957 until 1962 Mr Staeck studied law at Heidelberg, Hamburg, and Berlin before taking both state exams. He was admitted to the German bar in 1969.

    Klaus Staeck is probably best known for his political poster art. He began to teach himself how to work as a graphic designer while pursuing his legal studies, creating posters, postcards, and flyers. In 1960, Mr Staeck became a member of Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD). In the late 1960s he took part in local politics in Heidelberg. Over the years he created three hundred different motifs, drawing from current political discussions. He took sides for the poor, the environment, and for peace, urging his countrymen to join him and to interfere in political affairs. In his campaigns he employed claims such as, e.g., Deutsche Arbeiter – die SPD will euch eure Villen im Tessin wegnehmen (“German workers: the SPD seeks to take away your villas in Tessin from you”), or Die Reichen müssen noch reicher werden – deshalb CDU (“The rich must become richer yet, therefore vote CDU”).

    First he made woodcut prints, while from 1967 onward he changed to screen printing. Mr Staeck managed to finance his political actions by selling his artwork in Edition Tangente publishing house which later came to be known as Edition Staeck. He worked together with other political artists and writers, most notably Joseph Beuys, Panamarenko, Dieter Roth, Nam June Paik, Wolf Vostell, Daniel Spoerri, Günter Grass, Walter Jens, and Heinrich Böll who publicly spoke out in his favour. At the beginning of the 1970´s Staeck began his long time collaboration with Gerhard Steidl. So far, Klaus Staeck was sued in 41 cases for his artwork to be banned from public, to no avail.[2]

    Since 1986 Mr Staeck has been visiting professor at Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. In April 2006 he was elected president of Berlin Akademie der Künste, succeeding to Adolf Muschg who had stepped down from this position late in 2005.

    Klaus Staeck was awarded the first Zille prize for political graphic design in 1970, and the Großes Bundesverdienstkreuz in 2007.

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    Reindert Wepko van de Wint Den Helder, (1942-2006)

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    Without knowing, many people have encountered work by R.W. van de Wint. The large vertical paintings in the dutch National Assembly are paintings by R.W. van de Wint.

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    RWVDW will become increasingly imortant for dutch art because  he bought a piece of land in the year of his death , meaning to turn this into a outside museum in which he and his friend artist could develop their works in an outside situation. Much like Ian Hamilton Finlay intended to do in the same your 2006. he also died in the year he started his developments, but there is a difference too. The Dutch municipal government of Den Helder embrased the plans and is now building a nice compact museum beside the sculpture garden.  The building is delayed because of the pandemic and the park/garden is not open yet, but this will be our first museum visit after the museums reopen. A great initiative and i can only recommend the park because personally i consider sculpture gardens among the most accessible and high valued cultural desitinations.

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    On the first initiative, Arlette Brouwes designed this “bidbook” for the Nolen project in 1986. The idea is now 35 years in development and soon, the project will have been completed. Meaning a start for a collection of which RWVDW must have dreamed a very longtime.

    wint nollenproject

     

     

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    Bart de Vogel (1948-2020)

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    The reason of this blog is not because Bart de Vogel is such a famous name in dutch art, but because i recently discovered some original photographs from 50 years ago in which de Vogel is at work at his glass furnace. He attended the Rietveld academy and was known for his clay sculptures and glas objects and at some time in 1970 these photographs were taken by Foto J. Cupido for an article in the Sixties dutch newspaper HET VADERLAND. Now i have these in my posession and the original photographs are a true document for glass artists in the Netherlands in the Sixties. The original photographs are for sale at www.ftn-books.com

     

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    Barend Blankert (1941)

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    Some will say and compare him as being a dutch Lucian Freud, but Barend Blankert is for me still Barend Blankert and personally i would not compare him with anybody else.

    Every time i encounter a painting by Blankert and study it i make up my own story. The scene and composition are the inspiration and the result always an original story and probabaly not the story Blankert intended.

    So beside the impressive painting technique in which Blankert excels his storytelling is another quality this artist has. It is well worth studying this artist and whenever there is a possibility to see his paintings, do not hesitate and go there to admire these.

    www.ftn-books.com has some Blankert publicatons available.

    blankert

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    Marc Bijl (1970)

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    The most informative text on Marc Bijl i encountered on Wikipedia, but on a personal note, i agree with every element of this text. Marc Bijl stands for art on the borders of society in which gothic and punk are combined with Pop Culture…. I love it.

    From 1992 until 1997 Marc Bijl studied at the Royal Academy of Art & Design in ‘s–Hertogenbosch. In 1996 he studied for a year at Glasgow School of Art. In his early work, Marc Bijl reacted to global themes and to popular fascination with symbols of political power, globalization of the economy, religion and nationalism. This resulted in interventions in public space, videos, sculptures and installations that underscored or undermined world views. Bijl endeavours to expose superficialities and myths via his work. Bijl switches in his work between political activity and street culture as he does between the media of image, text and music. He exposes the superficialities, icons and myths of popular culture in his work to stimulate the spectator to contemplate about moral and ethical issues. The symbol, the logo and the label are his potential targets and his artistic tools. He likes to upset, relocate and re-connote their superficial image and their mythmaking – always aiming at a critical analysis of the social conditions of the society. Bijl employs visual elements borrowed from punk and Gothic subcultures and from anarchism. His early works are representational, cartoon-like and often textual. His recent work is more abstract and minimalistic, exemplifying a shift in approach, by which he pares down different perspectives and methodologies to a new essence. The crux is no longer the ‘symbolism’ but what that symbolism represents and signifies. In these most recent works, Bijl makes clear references to modernist art-historical icons such as Mark Rothko, Mondriaan, De Stijl (Rietveld chair) and more subtle references to Jannis Kounellis and Joseph Beuys. Bijl adapts these classical works to his own corporate style. He seeks a more abstract formal language that is in many respects more ambiguous than his earlier vocabulary.

    Bijl undermines systems but at the same time he is depended on these systems. Bijl’s work is often rebellious and tends to the illegality. His work is clearly rooted in street culture and possesses elements of graffiti, performance and installation art.

    www.ftn-books.com has some nice Marc Bijl publications available.

    marc bijl nai