To what extent does an artwork create itself? And how much of the final product is a result of the artists’ guiding hand? I sometimes get the impression that most of my works seem to make themselves. It’s as if they have all these opinions regarding what they want to be/look like/say, and I find my role in the process reduced to that of collaborator instead of creator. Semâ Bekirovic
The work of artist Semâ Bekirovic is best described as playful conceptualism. Like reality, it’s a universe of temporary constellations wherein objects, people, animals and/or chemical reactions trigger each other into acting out their parts in a play directed by coincidence. Bekirovic tries to create a field of tension between the parameters she defines and her subject’s personal agenda. She eschews a hands-on, interfering approach, allowing her subject to co-author the work.
Bekirovic has always been inspired by scientific ideas and concepts. Her work has been known to feature black holes (Event Horizon, 2010), human-influenced-animal-culture (Koet, 2007), the first and second laws of thermodynamics (Fire Sequence, 2013/ Radiance Of Sensible Heat, 2016) as well as forensic techniques (Cube 02, 2017). Her work deals with the supposed difference between culture and nature, as well as the obtaining (and letting go) of control. At times she has deployed animals in her work, though not really as subject (or object), but in a more collaborative fashion. Her method usually consists of deciding on and implementing parameters and letting the work ‘develop itself’. In this sense you could say that she is a spectator in her own practice, yet this does in no way deminish the idiosyncracy of her work.
About two years ago i wrote a blog on Vali Myers. The muse of Ed van der Elsken and an artist that that is strongly rooted in the Sixties Art. Now i recently was invited to witness the exhibition on dutch photography at the Nederlands Fotomuseum and ther it was …..another Vali Myers card with the iconic rain portrait made in Paris by Ed van der ELSKEN. Both cards are now for sale at www.ftn-books.com
De Kat was a driving force behind the Kennemer Kunstenaarskring. After the war, he and Kees Verwey founded the Hollandse Aquarellistenkring and De Kat remained its chairman until after 1965. He moved to Bloemendaal and became a good friend of Godfried Bomans, helping him found the Teisterbant club. De Kat became a member of Arti et Amicitiae where he won the Arti Medal in 1969. Ten years later, in 1979, he received the Jeanne Oosting Prize.[1]
He was an art critic for the newspaper Haarlems Dagblad in the years 1951–1955 and wrote for Het Vrije Volk.[1] After 1955 he became a teacher at the Amsterdam Rijksakademie, where he would be a tutor for many artists until 1972. His relationship with Hans van Zijl came to an end, just before she died in 1963. De Kat moved to Amsterdam and remarried in 1964 with Danish artist Dora Dahl-Madsen. The couple spent a lot of time in their second house in France, an inspiring environment for De Kat. Due to health issues they left Amsterdam in 1992 and moved to Laren. He died there, at the age of 88.
As an artist, De Kat was influenced by the École de Paris and painters like Pierre Bonnard, Édouard Vuillard, Albert Marquet en Nicolas de Staël. His paintings are mostly landscapes and still lifes with an intimate, calm atmosphere. His surroundings were his most important source of inspiration. Although he used abstraction in his paintings, he never abandoned reality completely. As a teacher, he focused on craftmanship, the weight of tradition and the interplay between rationality and emotions. De Kat’s work can be found in several Dutch museums, like the Frans Hals Museum and Teylers Museum in Haarlem and the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam.
www.ftn-books.com has some publications on this artist now available.
Peter Martens (1937-1992) was a Dutch socially engaged photographer. Wherever he went, Hong Kong, Rotterdam, Calcutta, Kenia or New York, he photographed power relationships. The crippled, praying, morally broken or even murdered people he captured can be crawling or lying on the floor, but they still are people among fellow human beings. They are flanked by those who are still are upright: police officers, the military or the church, ambiguous figures of power and authority who guide as well as oppress, dominate as well as support. What takes place on Martens stage is nothing less than life itself. The work of Peter Martens has an unique place in Dutch photography. As one of the only Dutch photographers Martens has been nominated different times for the Magnum photography award and in 1977 and 1979 he won several awards at World Press Photo. In 1984 Peter Martens was awarded the Capi-Lux Alblas Prize for his entire oeuvre and in 1988 the Silver Camera Foundation proclaimed him Photojournalist of the Year.
Hoekstra publications are scarce, but finally i have found at a reasonable price PIG. A Hoekstra/Hofsted artist book. Designed by Rutger Fuchs and published on the POLYNESIAN INSTANT GEOGRAPHY project at the Stedelijk Museum. A true artist book. Folio sized and one of the few Stedelijk Museum publication with a non standard size (The others BEWOGEN BEWEGING and PAUL THEK, both from the Sixties). This is ag reat publication and one that has a place in the art collection of the Stedelijk Muzseum and many other museums too. PIG is now available at www.ftn-books.com.
In my (humble) opinion, Arp is one of the greatest artists from the 20th Century, together with Pollock, Brancusi and all Minimal Art artist they are my favorites. I say this because last week i encountered a catalogue with works by Arp for sale at galerie Neher in 1987. The catalogie is great , but what makes it special is the price list which was inserted in it . A relief/sculpture for around 100K makes this at todays prices outright cheap and a painting for around 200K is hard to believe. Still …..this certainly is my kind of art, but for me personally i just draw as much energy and satisfaction from art from artists that are still cheap and can be had for a couple of hundred euro. To prove my case here are some recent additions of paintings i truly love.
Reggy GunnFrank van Hemert
The catalogue of the Arp exhibition and its price list is now available at www.ftn-books.com
Rose Stach is an interdisciplinary artist from Germany working in the fields of installation, object, textile, video, photography, and performance. The works of the artist are characterized by underlying social commentary, reflection of current events, and psychological manipulation. Employing various means of artistic expression, the author exposes the controversial nature of the reality by stating that the meanings of well-familiar objects may be changed. Spatial installations of Stach are constructed based on the principle of paradoxical combinations, where the viewer becomes involved in a Kafkaesque situation filled with aimless action. Quite often transformed objects stepping beyond the limits of daily routine acquire symbolic meanings and through them the author speaks of the problems of the world that she is most concerned about, such as exploitation of developing countries, emigration, crisis of values, growing consumerism, narcissism, and war. The author also often uses autobiographic details, personal experiences, pursuits of artistic identity, and explores the psychological and social obstacles burdening the contemporary society and offers an opportunity of getting rid of them. Stach received the2014 BundesGEDOK Art Prize and on this occasion of her show at the Frauenemuseum Bonn this UnderCover publication was published. It is now available at www.ftn-books.com
Readers of this blog know of my admiration for the Galerie Denise Rene. In all past decades they were the first to present Avant Garde artists and in the sixties they were one of the first to show ZERO artists and their works. One of these shows was the legendary UECKER exhibition in 1968. The catalogue is like a “ghost” catalogue since it is rarely seen or offered, but now I have a copy for sale. This is certainly not cheap , but extremely scarce and a solid investment. available at www.ftn-books.com
POne of the most memorable paintings i recently saw was at the Pompidou museum in Metz. Together with a magnificent large Miro the Delaunay impressed me most.
Robert Delaunay, and his wife Sonia, were influential artists from the 20th century who combined strongly in the same abstract movements
Orphism is the movement in which they are most strongly linked and this artistic style involved colourful, geometric shapes, similar to the Kandinsky circles painting, known as Farbstudie Quadrate. The Delaunays are generally regarded as having been involved from the very start of this movement. There are clear similarities between their work and other related artists such as Piet Mondrian, Wassily Kandinsky, Kazimir Malevich and Paul Klee.
This website will look into the careers of both Sonia and Robert. Robert Delaunay had a highly impressive control and understanding of colour and this was a crucial element for modern abstract artists, where objects would be symbolic but simple, making colour choices even more fundamental to each art work that they produced. Many from this era had the technical methods at hand to produce art in more traditional styles but they simply preferred the sort of art that you can see spread across this website.
Robert Delaunay was born and bred in France, though his career was to achieve success across Europe, once he had been embraced by other notable modern artists like Kandinsky who appreciated the direction that he was going in and also wanted to encourage the further spread of modern art movements down as many avenues as possible. French art had also had a history of leading from the front and so it was beneficial to have French artists who wanted to push abstract art onwards.
The original title of the painting above was Rhythm, Joie de Vivre and is one of the best known from this painter. Artist Delaunay began his career with many landscapes which held a touch of abstraction but it was only later in his life when he really took it further into the realms of what we consider Orphism with exceptionally simple displays of geometric shapes, complicated only slightly by his use of tones and colour.
Most contemporary artists show a development into the abstract rather than an immediate start there, particularly those who came at the start of this period. Franz Marc is another artist whose work may interest you if you enjoy the art featured here from the careers of both Robert and Sonia Delaunay. That artist produced many abstract works of animals but he was not quite as pure abstract as the Orphism styles of the Delaunays, who really took their work down to the most simplistic possible, whilst still maintaining symbolic messages in the background.
The early stages of this artist offered some similarities to the work of post-impressionists like Vincent Van Gogh and it seems that as the artist grew in experience and confidence that he began to forge his own original style which was later to create the Orphism movement, in conjunction with the similar style of his wife Sonia, who herself was a contemporary artist. Red Eiffel Tower in Paris is shown above and is a brilliant adaptation of this world-famous piece of architecture which has been included in the careers of countless artists, not all of whom have been French.
There is a beauty to the structure but also a highly symbolic nature to it as France’s most recognisable building. The role of French artists in European art has also ensured that many of these paintings of the Eiffel Tower have also been well-publicised. It was the artist’s depiction of the Eiffel Tower which really drew in a lot of new fans who found his work exciting and at that time it was not quite as radically abstract as he later became, thus appealing to a wider audience who were only just starting to embrace the ideas and techniques of abstract artists.
French art fans would always respond well to interesting depictions of their national symbol, and things were no different when Robert unveiled his Red Eiffel Tower. Colour was unquestionably the key to success for both of the Delaunays and they would go for bright tones which was very much the hallmark of contemporary art. Up until the French impressionists there had always been a relatively unoriginal use of colour, normally just to replicate exactly what the artist could see with their own eyes. Nowadays, there is a far great experimentation with colour and artists like those here helped to establish that. www.ftn-books.com has from both Delaunay artist books in its inventory.
For a short 10 months i lives in Paris. 16th Arrondissement, Rue La Fontaine, just a 20 minute walk from the Avenue Wilson where the Musee d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris was located . It witnessed the opening of the Centre Pompidou, but in the short period before the opening. The Modern Art Museum at the Avenue Wilson was the only modern art museum in Paris worth visitinbg. At that time they had Brancusi studio on show and at one of the months in 1977 an Andre Masson exhibition and yes….. i now have the catalogue of this exhibition available at www.ftn-books.com
He was born in Belgium. In 1908, he graduated from the painting courses at the Brussels embroidery school and entered the local Academy of arts. In 1912, he continued his studies at the Paris School of fine arts. At the beginning of WWI, he volunteered for the front and was seriously wounded. He lived mainly in Paris, initially earning as a ceramist and newspaper proofreader. Having signed a contract with the famous art dealer D.-H. Kahnweiler, he managed to devote himself entirely to art from mid-1920s.
He had a strong color-symbolist manner in his early works,. However, his works went through a period of cubism later. In 1924, he found himself in the mainstream of surrealism, having met A.Breton after Masson’s first personal exhibition. He developed cubist forms in a surreal manner, then, in 1926, he worked in the technique of “automatic painting”, creating pictorial and graphic compositions (graphics always played a full-fledged parallel role in his works), where individual figures and symbols are increasingly were subjected to the spontaneous play of rhythms, colors and strokes.
In 1940, he moved to the United States, where his art directly boosted the formation of abstract expressionism, Masson himself was deeply impressed by the works of classical Chinese painting in the American collections. Returning to France (1945), he created impressionistic local landscapes.
His work of 1953-1959 attributed to the” Asian period ” by their dominant echoes with the far Eastern ink painting.
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
