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Japanese posters ( 1977 )…catalogue by Wim Crouwel

The Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam has a history with posters and specially the posters from Japan were presented on multiple occasions within exhibitions on the subject. In 1977 , the “Japanse Poster” exhibition catalogue was designed by Wim Crouwel, who designed a very special catalogue for the exhibition . The catalogue is one of the best from the seventies and instead of the typical Crouwel typography

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on the cover there are Japanese letters drawing your attention. Red lettering on a silver background let this one stand out from the rest.

Stedelijk Museum#JAPANSE AFFICHES# Crouwel, 1977, NM

This catalogue was published with number 617 within the series of published Stedelijk Museum catalogues.

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Piet Dirkx daily ..323

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Piet Dirkx cigarbox 323

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Greg Gorman (1949)

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If ever there was a celebrity photographer with a personal approach to his subjects Gorman is for me second best after Koos Breukel. To get an impression of his many excellent and sometimes even superb photographs please visit his site first and then continue reading.

http://www.gormanphotography.com

Greg Gorman’s work documents that peculiar obsession of the 20th century celebrity. Each shot, a testament to the individual character, gives a picture of human nature in its infinite range. For me a photograph is most successful when it doesn’t answer all the questions, Somewhere it must be an enigma . Breukel excels in that area and for me Gorman has the same qualities .

For over three decades, Greg Gorman has continued to master the art of photography. From personality portraits and advertising campaigns to magazine layouts and fine art work, Gorman has developed and showcased a discriminating and unique style in his profession. There are several books by Gorman available at www.ftn-books.com

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, including the special edition of INSIDE LIFE, which contains an original signed photograph of a male nude body.

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Piet Dirkx daily ..322

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Piet Dirkx cigarbox 322

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Charlotte Schleiffert (1967)

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For me Charlotte Schleiffert has the same qualities as Jean-Michel Basquiat. She creates a world of Hybrid creatures, part human an part animal, dressed in strange fashion and executed in a very large size. She paints, draws and makes sculptures and with these elements she creates installations. The result …… a typical Schleiffert world made by Charlotte Schleiffert and unique in the world of art. Charlotte Schleiffert is represented by galerie Akinci . / http://www.akinci.nl/schleiffert.html

www.ftn-books.com has 2 titles on Schleiffert available

Within the series of Hollandse Meesters there is a 15 minutes documentary on Charlotte Schleiffert available:

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Piet Dirkx daily ..321

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Piet Dirkx cigarbox 321

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James Lee Byars (1932-1997) sculptor and performance artist

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James Lee Byars was both. An excellent sculptor and a performance artist in the US, much like Joseph Beuys was in Germany. They knew eachother very well and became friends in the late Seventies, resulting in a fascination correspondence between them of which part was published.

Obsessed by the idea of perfection, Byars produced a remarkable body of work that strove to give form to his search for beauty and truth. Pursuing what he called “the first totally interrogative philosophy,” he made and proposed art at scales ranging from the vastness of outer space to the microscopic level of subatomic particles, in an attempt to delineate the limits of our knowledge while enacting a desire for something more.

Here is the performance of THE PERFECT LOVE LETTER in Stockholm.

Byars was one of a kind and his art stands out from that of his contemporary artists. www.ftn-books.com is lucky to have some excellent publications on James Lee Byars.

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Maria Lassnig ( 1919-2014 )

Tate Modern announced her last year show as follows….The first UK retrospective of one of the twentieth century’s most original painters… and she definitely is. The Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam held a retrospective 23 years ago and she proved to be a highly original artist with a completely different approach to her subjects, sometimes very personal, making her own body the subject of a painting. Lassnig made informal paintings, abstract expressionist paintings was educated in and made animation art and showed her paintings during the Documenta which was curated by Rudi Fuchs in Kassel. During his first years of his directorship of the Stedelijk Museum, Fuchs invited her for a large retrospective in 1994 in the Stedelijk. More than 23 years before the Tate the STedelijk Museum recognized her qualities as an artist. Time after time i come to realize that the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam is possibly the most trend setting museum in the world of Modern Art. The Maria Lassnig catalogue is available at www.ftn-books.com

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Pinot Gallizio (1902-1964)

Schermafbeelding 2017-07-14 om 15.00.38The inventor of industrial painting? i am not sure, but here follows the text i found on Wikipedia on Gallizio after i sought information on him. He is rather obscure and rarely presented in collections , but in the 60’s the Stedelijk Museum held an exhibition and published an extremely nice catalogue on him. But this artist deserves better because for many he was a source of inspiration and a great influence. he was admired by Jorn, Constant and Debord.

https://youtu.be/XD21kq8bz0s

Pinot-Gallizio was born in Alba, Piedmont, where he became an independent Left councilman and a chemist. In 1955, he met Asger Jorn, with whom he co-founded the Experimental Laboratory of the Imaginist Bauhaus in Alba, which was part of the International Movement for an Imaginist Bauhaus, in opposition to the return to productivism by others in the Bauhaus school, in particular Max Bill. It was held in Pinot-Gallizio’s studio, a monastery from the seventeenth century, and was attended by such artists as Enrico Baj who experimented with nuclear painting techniques, Walter Olmo, who experimented with musical interventions, Ettore Sottsass, Elena Verrone, and Piero Simondo.

Pinot-Gallizio drew from his background as a chemist in developing new painting techniques. In 1956 he, along with Jorn, organized the First World Congress of Free Artists, at which a representative from the Lettrist International spoke, foreshadowing the foundation of the Situationist International in 1957 by members of both groups, including Pinot-Gallizio. At this conference the Italian artists withdrew from the Laboratory, and after the formation of the SI only Pinot-Gallizio and his son, Giors Melanotte, remained. He helped to make the SI known in the art world with an exhibition in Paris in 1959

www.ftn-books.com has the Stedelijk Museum publication available

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Kees Maks (1876-1967) .

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Another painter of daily life in the Netherlands, but only known in the Netherlands , is Kees Maks. The same as Mondrian, Sluijter and Gestel, he tavelled to Paris in his younger years before the first World War. There he entered the Salon the Automne and became a member, where he met Kees van Dongen ( see blog yesterday) and became influenced by this painter. Maks was fully recognized as an important painter when his painting Nightcafe was purchased by the Musee de Luxembourg in 1927.

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Contemporaries often placed Maks’s modernity in his figures, who were clothed and coiffed according to the latest fashion and demonstrated the latest dances, such as the FURLANA. Maks himself chose the clothing for his models, undoubtedly assisted by his wife who worked at Hirsch and later became and independent fashion designer.

As DE TELEGRAAF put itin in 1920….MAKS proved himself a painter who dares to go into raptures over the fashion of time. But despite all this qualities Maks in only known in the Netherlands and is rarely encountered in collections outside our borders.

There are a few tiles on Maks available at www.ftn-books.com

maks shop