stedelijk museum amsterdam – Page 47

Posted on 05.04.201711.02.2018 by ftnbooks — Leave a comment

Mario Merz (1925-2003)

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This was the first photograph i encountered on the Net of Mario Merz and i instantly was frightened. Here is an angry man if ever there was one. Mario Merz works are on show in the van Abbemuseum and the Stedelijk Museum and at the time Rudi Fuchs was director of the Haags Gemeentemuseum , there was one work on loan. What struck me at that time was the lightness and transparency of the works. Larger sized and as a work of art these works were changing the rooms in which they were shown and interacting with the space they were presented in. There is a nice example of such a presentation in the Castello de Rivoli in Torino which first exhibitions were also curated by Rudi Fuchs.

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These works take time for an art lover to be appreciated, but when you do so. There is no artist equal to Mario Merz and you forget about the “angry” old man in the photographs , but only see the sheer beauty of the works he created.

There ares ome nice examples of Mario Merz catalogues availabel at www.ftn-books.com including the first series of catalogues on the Castello di Rivoli project by Rudi Fuchs.

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Posted on 04.04.201711.02.2018 by ftnbooks — Leave a comment

Yves Klein (1928-1962)

Yesterday i learned from a dutch TV program (DWDD / De Wereld Draait Door) that there is a large Yves Klein retrospective in the BOZAR museum Brussels.

Yves Klein , touched many currents in Modern Art, even was one of the participants in ZERO, but eventually developed a style of his own using in many of his works the iconic BLUE color he developed. Was it zero, action painting or performance art? Today art lovers around the world can not answer these questions , but one can see for one self what fits most, because there is a great retrospective on his art in BOZAR/ Bruxelles until the 20th of August. His monochrome blue paintings are on show together with his action paintings of blue prints of female bodies. A great show and possibly a once in a lifetime chance to see many important Yves Klein works together.

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Nowadays Klein paintings fetch record prices at auctions all over the world, but in one of his first shows In Krefeld in 1961 nothing was sold. This was followed by an unsuccessful opening at Leo Castelli’s Gallery, New York, in which Klein failed to sell a single painting. He stayed with Rotraut Uecker at the Chelsea Hotel for the duration of the exhibition; and, while there, he wrote the “Chelsea Hotel Manifesto”, a proclamation of the “multiplicity of new possibilities.” In part, the manifesto declared:

At present, I am particularly excited by “bad taste.” I have the deep feeling that there exists in the very essence of bad taste a power capable of creating those things situated far beyond what is traditionally termed “The Work of Art.” I wish to play with human feeling, with its “morbidity” in a cold and ferocious manner. Only very recently I have become a sort of gravedigger of art (oddly enough, I am using the very terms of my enemies). Some of my latest works have been coffins and tombs. During the same time I succeeded in painting with fire, using particularly powerful and searing gas flames, some of them measuring three to four meters high. I use these to bathe the surface of the painting in such a way that it registered the spontaneous trace of fire.

To prepare your self for the exhibition, know that over the decades excellent books on Klein were published. There are some available at www.ftn-books.com

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Posted on 02.04.201711.02.2018 by ftnbooks — Leave a comment

James Rosenquist (1933-2017)

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Sad news this morning, one of the greatest Pop Art artists, James Rosenquist, died at the age of 83 of March 31, 2017.

Rosenquist was one of the last living great Pop Art artists and a contemporary of Warhol Lichtenstein,and Wesselman. He was the lesser known of these 4 names, but what made him special and stand out from them was the use of extremely large canvasses. But also his prints were larger than normal. He holds the record for the largest print in the world measuring 35 x 7 feet!

Rosenquist works are present in all major collections of Contemporary art in the world. A large part of his inventory was destroyed during a fire in 2009 in which all his works present in the studio were destroyed. Rosenquist will be remembered as one of the great Pop Art artist. www.ftn-books.com has some nice catalogues on him.

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Posted on 01.04.201711.02.2018 by ftnbooks — Leave a comment

Donald Judd and the Chinati foundation

Marfa Texas…that is where the Chinati Foundation is settled. The Foundation was an initiative by Donald Judd who founded this in 1979. Since buildings were eerected and exhibitions were being held with friends and admired artists. There were exhibitions with works by John Chamberlain, an installation by Dan Flavin occupying six former army barracks, and works by Carl Andre, Ingólfur Arnarsson, Roni Horn, Ilya Kabakov, Richard Long, Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen, David Rabinowitch, and John Wesley. Each artist’s work is installed in a separate building on the museum’s grounds.

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One of the main buildings is called the Arena. It was built in the 1930s as a gymnasium for the soldiers at Fort D.A. Russell. After the fort closed in 1946, the gym floor was torn up for the wood, and sand was laid to provide an indoor arena for horses. In the mid 1980s, Judd restored the building, which was largely dilapidated. Judd left the long strips of concrete that had originally supported the wooden floor, and filled the intervening spaces with gravel. For practical considerations, Judd poured a large concrete area by the kitchen at the south end, and a smaller area at the north end of the building’s interior. These two areas comprise half of the total area of the building. Judd also added a sleeping loft and designed the outer courtyard, which includes areas for eating, bathing, and a barbecue. There are two works by David Rabinowitch installed in the building: one on the ground floor (Elliptical Plane in 3 Masses and 4 Scales, 1971-72) and one in the loft (6-Sided Bar, III, 1969). These works are on long-term loan from the Judd Foundation.

Chinati is like a Disney park for the Minimal art admirer. Everything breathes Minimal Art and the Judd designs make it even more special. There are some very nice Donald Judd books available at www.ftn-books.com including one publication by the Chinati foundation.

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Posted on 31.03.201711.02.2018 by ftnbooks — Leave a comment

Minimal Art by Judd, Andre and LeWitt

I chose these 3 artists to tell you something on Minimal Art in the Netherlands. These 3 artists were the first to be invited to have an exhibition on Minimal Art in 1968,. The exhibition was curated by Enno Develing and the catalogue published with this exhibition has become one of the rarest of dutch museum catalogues from the last half century. I am fortunate to still have it available in PDF, because this one was so rare i decided, at the time i was working as a bookseller/publsher for the Haags Gemeentemuseum to buy one to turn it into PDF files and so making it available for collectors and visitors. Thanks to Ap Gewald, who had the original copy and lent it to me for this purpose, this project became possible. A good decision, because it has become a very hard to find catalogue and because of its importance it is still available for students and collectors alike in PDF.

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For all customers ordering in the next week, i make this catalogue available on request and sent it by Wetransfer. But because of this long time relation of these 3 artists, all three of them have made special editions with the museum shop. Sol LeWitt made painted tiles, Carl Andre small copper plates in editions of 1/1 and Donald Judd, made brightly colored furniture for the bookshop in the early nineties. Of course these products are all completely sold out, but what is still available, but is increasingly becoming more scarce every day, is the Museum publications and artist books by these artists. Specially Sol LeWitt works are harder to find each

month, but i am proud to have one of the 1972 editions by Sol LeWitt in my inventory. It is the Macerata edition of 8 original /signed silkscreens by Sol LeWiit in its original white plastic container.

https://ftnbooks.myshopify.com/admin/products/448412805

And because we have to celebrate a milestone on Facebook there is of course a discount code (valid for only 2 days) , which gives a 10% discount : FBminimal10

Please take a look at the many beautiful Minimal Art books that are available at:

www.ftn-books.com

Posted on 30.03.201711.02.2018 by ftnbooks — Leave a comment

John Wesley (1928)

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Pop artist John Wesley is one of the lesser known Pop Art artist for us Europeans. There was of course this great 1993 exhibition in the Stedelijk Museum, but since few other exhibitions were being held in this part of the world. Still, Wesley is a much more famous in the US, but has never reached the popularity of the other Pop art artist like Warhol and Lichtenstein.

The spareness of his technique often seems more akin to the school known as Minimalism, however, and indeed his closest personal associations were with artists such as Dan Flavin and Donald Judd, the latter of whom wrote a laudatory essay on Wesley’s early work and later set aside a space for him at his complex in Marfa, Texas. Wesley himself considers his work to be aligned with Surrealism, and many of his paintings since the 1960s have taken this dimension yet further, while retaining an extremely limited range of colors and a sign-like flatness. Several retrospectives of his work have been held, the most recent at the P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center in 2000, but since it is quiet except for some gallery presentations. This artist deserves much more , because his works really stand out from the other Pop Art artist and have a quality of their own. www.ftn-books.com has beside some very nice Pop art books, the famous and rare Stedelijk Museum catalogue from 1993 available.

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John Wesdley is represented by the David Kordansky gallery who has some nice examples of his works on their site :

http://davidkordanskygallery.com/artist/john-wesley/

Posted on 29.03.201711.02.2018 by ftnbooks — Leave a comment

Andries Dirk Copier (1901-1991)

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If there is one glas artist you will probably know the name of, or at least who’s work you encountered once in your life time, it must be A.D. Copier. After studying as an apprentice at the workshops of his father at the Leerdam Glas factory and the vakschool voor Typografie in Utrecht, he became practically the sole designer for the factory for a period of almost 40 years. In these years he made many glas related designs, but one stands out…it is the Gilde glas series which is still being made and copied all over the world.

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The glas has excellent drinking and tasting qualities holds extremely well in you hand and is one of the icons in dutch design. Since he left the Leerdam factory in 1971 he made unica and glas objects after his own designs .

Andries Dirk Copier is considered as one of the great true talented artists in the world of glas, the difference between him and for example Lino Tagliapietra is that Copier always has the usability and the aesthetics of the object in mind, where as others loose themselves in experiments. www.ftn-books.com has some nice books on Copier in its inventory.

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Posted on 27.03.201711.02.2018 by ftnbooks — Leave a comment

Dennis Hopper (1932-2010)

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First time i saw Dennis Hopper in a movie was in Easy Rider. Together with Peter Fonda and Jack Nicholson he made this movie stand out from the rest in those days. A first class road movie which has become a cult classic since. I saw this movie in the Leidseplein Movie theatre in Amsterdam and the fact that i still can remember the theater in which i saw this movie, makes this one stand out for me . It makes a part of my cultural youth together with the Dali exhibition in the Boymans van Beuningen and the movies MORE and IF. I forgot about Hopper, but as soon as i saw his maniac appearance in BLUE VELVET, i was impressed again and started to read about him and saw his Photographs for the first time and noticed that he was a a painter / sculptor too. This man is a multi talented person in which his photographs stand out for me and are even more interesting than his acting. Highly personal photographs, a unique way of seeing things and the reason why an exhibition of his photographs was brought to the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam ( catalogue available at www.ftn-books.com).

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In 2010 , to early, advanced prostate cancer was diagnosed and soon after he died at the age of 78 and left us some great movies and art works which can be admired up to the length of days.

A great interview ( 45 min) on his career can be found on Youtube .

https://youtu.be/hZkC05HUzt0

Posted on 26.03.201711.02.2018 by ftnbooks — Leave a comment

Malevich…the black square(1915)

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The Black square painting by Malevich is considered to be one of the key paintings in Modern Art and possibly the first suprematist painting in the world. Non-object art was a first in those days (1915).

If one looks at the picture of the Petrograd exhibition of 1915, you can not imagine that these paintings were made as early as 1915!. Place them between the “hard edge” paintings of the late sixties and seventies and there is hardly any difference except their size. Who was this artist who made such a stir with his Paintings? It was Kasimir Malevich, who is recognized as one of the founders of abstract art as it is known today. Constructivists paintings in a loose way. Critics called them Suprematist paintings. The Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam has the largest collection of suprematist paintings outside Russia and because they were so fortunate to have them in their collection, almost every 10 years an exhibition on them is held and with it a beautiful catalogue. (Some available at www.ftn-books.com) is published. Worldwide, painters were influenced by Kasimir Malevich, for instance in the Netherlands in the works by Willem Hussem and Siep van den Berg, you can recognize the influence of Malevich, but also great names in the art world like Ellsworth Kelly must know their art history. If you look at his paintings there certainly is a piece of Malevich in them.

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Posted on 24.03.201711.02.2018 by ftnbooks — Leave a comment

Peter Halley (1953) and THE HORN OF PLENTY

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1989.. Wim Beeren curated one of the iconic Stedelijk Museum from the 80’s….The Horn of Plenty.

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Contributions by Bickerton, Cemin, Doran, Dunham, Eckart, Ziegler, Gober, Halley, Kessler, Koons, LAsker, Prince,Rollins, Steinbach, Wool and Yarber. a great list of great artists from the eighties. One thing they had in common. They were all from New York. Koons is nowadays the most famous one, but i noticed that Peter Halley is among them and beside some smaller exhibitions . He is hardly known in Europe and specially this artist deserves far better. Still the exhibition one of those from the eighties that is remembered by many followers of the Stedelijk Museum exhibitions and it was one of the last gtreat ones which gave an overview of New York modern art in the eighties. This catalogue is available at www.ftn-books.com together with some catalogues of the artist mentioned . specially the Halley is rarely encountered in the Netherlands.

https://youtu.be/t5VS6Ruorlg