Readers of this blog know of my admiration for Gerard Verdijk and did not hesitate a single secoond when in 2011 a very large painting by Verdijk was put up for auction and did not receive its first bid. It appeared to be the winning bid and since the moment this painting entered our home it has been on display in our living room. The painting was part of the Peter Stuyvesant collection but a decade ago the staff of the Turmac Tobacco company and the founders of the Stuyvesant foundation decided to sell their collection. This collection is very well documented and from its earliest of beginnings the best dutch designers made the catalogues which documented their additions. I knew almost for certain that our paintings was in one of these publications but i never found the right one, but…..i now have it and i am very pleased that our painting is prominently present in a beautiful large catalogue, designed by Anton Beeke …and the title of it is “GROOT” in de collectie Peter Stuyvesant.
Published in 1997, the new additions were curated by the former director of the Stedelijk Museum, Wim Beeren.( see photo above this blog) An interesting final addition which almost completes all Peter Stuyvesant publications. This one is not for sale but there are others which are available at www.ftn-books.com.
It was a long time on my wish list and ia finally could fullfill this wish. Since i met Floor van Keulen at the Haags Gemeentemuseum where he painted the “Project room” at the Haags Gemeentemuseum in 1989.
His wall drawings are extremely large narratives. You can discover human figuren, weapons, books and landscapes all within the same wall painting/drawing. Connected with eachother by more figures and objects, resulting in an almost abstract painting, but with so many details that are realistic. His stand alone paintings are scarce. Most of the time lare/extremely large and where his small drawings are just sketches and exercises for the large wall drawings. His paintings on paper are true paintings. Where his wall drawings are most of the time removed or painted over. His large “paintings” are permanent and one of these , from 1987 , i now have added to the FTN art collection.
The following text was found on the Piet Heen eek site and shows a different approach to his art.
Human figures and cartoons are the only motifs in the repertoire of drawings created by Floor van Keulen since 1980. They appear to be randomly spread across the surface, components of a well-balanced composition without any specific meaning. Shapes effortlessly melt into one another, debate with each other; emotions occasionally flare up, only to harmoniously merge together afterwards.
Floor van Keulen appears to shirk from the formal experiment, the abstract art experiment, in which realistic and figurative art that set the tone for hundreds of years is brushed aside as a truly relevant form. Van Keulen does not allow himself to be drawn into movements or trends within contemporary art. He has developed his own unique vision and confrontational visual language in which figurative depictions are interwoven with abstract shapes.
His art originates in his imagination and reality. He uses the ‘vocabulary’ he has put together through the years to formulate a vision of the world around him. The viewer encounters the virtuosity of the image and gets carried away in the painter’s exuberant gesture. On closer analysis of what it is exactly that affects the viewer so strongly, he or she first focuses on the pattern and motifs, attempting to decipher the artist’s story by interpreting the figurative elements. Only later does he or she discover that it is the work as a whole that is key here, the total emotion, not the details, form and contra-form. At first glance, the work appears to be expressive, but on closer inspection, clearly has a more subdued character and is carefully balanced and considered.
I understand completely that artist draw inspiration from other artists their works, but in the case of this “Fait d’hiver ” it is far too much a copy than an original work by Koons. I know of the spectacular Banality series sculpture from the Stedelijk Museum and i think it was a rightful choice to acquire this for a large sum., but i did not know the sculpture from the Centre Pompidou and its history. Here is the storuy which i found on “art-critique”
A Paris court of appeals has upheld a 2018 ruling regarding a 2015 copyright infringement lawsuit brought on by photographer Franck Davidovici. With the Tuesday decision, the Centre Pompidou and artist Jeff Koons have been found guilty of copyright infringement and now jointly owe Davidovici €190,000 (£163,900).
The lawsuit hinges on a 1988 sculpture by Koons called Fait d’hiver depicts the bust of a woman lying on the ground as a pig, wearing a flowered collar with a barrel, and two penguins look on. The amusing sculpture was part of “Banality,” a series by Koons that debuted in 1988. The series raised eyebrows at the time but many of its works would go on to be featured in a 2014 retrospective of Koons’ works that kicked off at the Whitney in New York before traveling to the Centre Pompidou and then the Guggenheim Bilbao.
“Fait d’Hiver” by US artist Jeff Koons at Christie’s auction house is seen before going on sale for an estimated 4-6 million USD in New York 12 November 2007. Christie’s will hold its bi-annual Post War and Contemporary Art Sale 13 November. AFP PHOTO/Emmanuel DUNAND / AFP PHOTO / EMMANUEL DUNAND
Meant to be commentary on the imagery of mass media, Fait d’hiver became the centre of the dispute after Davidovici saw Koons’ sculpture in a catalogue for the Centre Pompidou’s exhibition of the 2014 retrospective. The issue was that Davidovici found the sculpture to be incredibly similar to a photograph taken and published by the photographer in 1985.
Davidovici’s black and white photograph was created for the French brand Naf Naf and included a woman, wearing a jacket with fur accents, lying on the ground. A pig, wearing a collar with a barrel gazes at the woman with the words “FAIT D’HIVER” in the top left corner of the two-page spread.
“Fait d’hiver” (1985) by Franck Davidovici for Naf Naf.
While Koons made a few alterations, like the addition of two penguins and swapping the fur jacket for a mesh top, the sculpture does seem to mimic the photo taken by Davidovici just a few years earlier.
Davidovici first sued Koons and the Parisian museum in 2015 and in 2018, a judge ruled that the artist and museum violated copyright laws and owed Davidovici €135,000. However, the artist and museum appealed the ruling which has now been upheld and their monetary penalty was increased by €55,000. Additionally, if the museum or Koons continue to exhibit Fait d’hiver online, they will be fined €600 per day. Meanwhile, the publishers of the 2014 catalogue that accompanied the retrospective now owes Davidovici €14,000 as well.
In 2007, an artist’s proof of Koons’ Fait d’hiver sold at Christie’s for just under $4.3 million (£3 million).
Koons is no stranger for being taken to court for plagiarism. In 2019, a Paris court upheld a 2017 ruling that found the artist, and again the Centre Pompidou, guilty of copyright infringement. That case concerned Koons’ sculpture from the same series called Naked and a photograph titled Enfants by French photographer Jean-François Bauret. While the sculpture was not shown in the 2014 retrospective, images of it were used to advertise the show. The artist and museum were ordered to pay €20,000 to Bauret’s family. Koons also paid the family an addition €4,000 for use of the image.
Blog readers know of the large collection i have for sale on the Stedelijk Museum, its artists and its exhibitions ( www.ftn-books.com), but it is hard to grow this collection . No book markets, no museum visits and the only thing i could do is to photograph and describe my stock and add this to my inventory. It has now grown over by 1100 entries and i am convinced it is one of the largest collections for sale on the Stedelijk Museum and itss history. But to bridge the time between closure and reopening its collections to visitors, they made available some interesting virtual visits to the museum and its collections. Guided by curators and director Rein Wolfs , you can now make a virtual visit. One of the best i think is the one Rein Wolfs hosts. It shows the direction into which the Stedelijk is developing for the next decade or so. Interesting…. yes…., but i do hope they still will keep their focus on their history and great collection, they build over the years.
Most art lovers abroad do not know that within a distance of 10km of the Boymans van Beuningen Museum in Rotterdam, another great museum can be found. The museum itself much …much smaller…. but for its collection it deserves to be mentioned beside the Boymans. the STEDELIJK MUSEUM SCHIEDAM has had its collecting focus during the last 30 years on Cobra and The INFORMELEN and Zero art and build a collection which must be visited.
Situated in an old building in the center of Schiedam it is now being renovated to present its Cobra collection in the best way possible. So make a mental note when you are visiting Rotterdam. Take the tram to Schiedam and visit its collection when it opens again after the renovation. The following Stedelijk Museum Schiedam books are available at www.ftn-books.com
This time a double bill of Renato Guttuso and Alan Davie. Two exhibions both held at the Stedelijk Museum at the end of 1962. It is rumored that this poster was designed by Sandberg , but the execution of it done by ten Have. Still i love this poster .. The red and green indicate the hand of Sandberg and the simplicity of it makes this a highly important historical poster for the Stedelijk Museum. Both poster and catalogues of the exhibitions are available at www.ftn-books.com
After 1989 there was a change in the relationship between Western Europe and Russia. The result of an exchange of exhibitions and the beginning of a fruitful collaboration between the Russian State museums and the Gemeentemuseum Den Haag.
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There was, of course, a highly successful and visited in large numbers Pusjkin collection exhibition and on a much smaller scale a few years later the Russian Avant-Garde exhibition at the Paleis Lange Voorhout Museum curated by Franz Kaiser. An exquisite exhibition with a selection chosen from the Abram Chudnovsky collection. personally i think this was, after the Malevich exhibition at the Stedelijk Museum a few years earlier, an exhibition which showed the quality of Russian art in the beginning of 20th Century. Great paintings from a visionary collector who collected his fellow country men and since never has been seen again in one of the European Museums. The catalogue of this exhibition and both other catalogues are now available at www.ftn-books.com.
Together with Rie Cramer she became one of the foremost (female) illustrators in the Netherlands. Her style, personal but a typical derivate of the great Art Deco drawings she had seen in her youth. Open, colorful and more detailed when compared with the best work of Rie Cramer and rooted and inspired by her birth province Zeeland where she draws inspiration from.
The Zeeuwse Bibliotheek held an exhibition in 2010 and published together with ~ZOO a great book on Ella Riemersma which is now available at www.ftn-books.com.
There are not that many artists that have emerged from India and made a name for their selves in western art, but Nasreen Mohamedi is certainly one of them. Crown on her exhibition history was the REINA SOFIA exhibition in 2014 ( book available at www.ftn-books.com ). At this occasion, a large number of her line drawings and paintings were for the first time to be seen in Europe and with this exhibition she established her self as being one of the truly visionary original artist coming from outside the western art world.
Born in Karachi in 1937, before moving to Mumbai in her youth, and living and teaching in Vadodara until her final days, Mohamedi remains one of the most under-recognised artists of the 20th century. At the time when Indian Modernists were painting the colours and chaos of their homeland, Mohamedi worked alongside peers such as MF Husain, Tyeb Mehta and VS Gaitonde. Yet she was virtually alone amongst her peers because she broke away from the mainstream practice of figurative painting in post-Independence India. She has often been compared to Canadian abstract painter Agnes Martin and American minimalist Carl Andre. “‘Nasreen Mohamedi’ reveals the artist’s significant contribution to Modernism that expands the boundaries of Western art history and offers an opportunity to reconsider the meaning of abstract art,” reads the exhibition note. Mohamedi passed away at 53 in 1990, from a rare neurological disorder.
The obscurity in relation to the chronology and description of Mohamedi’s works have confounded curators and art historians. Her evolving language is seen through early abstract brushwork and figurative oil and watercolour, to her grid-based drawings and those in pen and ink.
While her line drawings are the most popular aspect of her oeuvre, what is also fascinating is Mohamedi’s photographic prints, known for their unique architectural quality. A well-travelled artist, Mohamedi took photographs in several places in the Middle East (she lived in Bahrain briefly in her youth), the US and Japan, apart from various cities in India including Chandigarh. her photographs, which highlight geometric shapes and lines in her surroundings through particular crops, mirrored how Mondrian began his path to abstraction, a reason why the two exhibitions will open simultaneously.
Another significant aspect is Mohamedi’s diaries, which reveals the artist’s mind at work. On display at Tate Liverpool are extracts, notes and source material she kept in her studio.
Another iconic duo from the early Sixties is the Wim Crouwel designed poster for the Etienne martin exhibition in 1963 and the catalogue he did design for the same exhibition. The catalogue is still influenced by the designs of Willem Sandberg, but the poster is completely different and a 100% Wim Crouwel design. The Martin poster has become the starting point of a series of iconic posters he made for the Stedelijk Museum. Both publications are now available at www.ftn-books.com.
Artist/ Author: Oliver Boberg
Title : Memorial
Publisher: Oliver Boberg
Measurements: Frame measures 51 x 42 cm. original C print is 35 x 25 cm.
Condition: mint
signed by Oliver Boberg in pen and numbered 14/20 from an edition of 20
