Piet Dirkx cigarbox 741
Gijs Bakker … a dutch design genius
https://www.nowness.com/series/on-design/on-design-gijs-bakker
Most of us have some a little knowledge of the designs by Gijs Bakker, because Bakker designed many “objects to use ” for the HEMA company. An excellent example is his dishmop in bright and happy colors.
This is just a small example of the many products Bakker designed and made with his designs a beautiful design product available to many at a reasonable price. Furniture, jewelry, books, posters and kitchenware all items that at one time were designed by Gijs bakker. 010 publishers published an excellent monography on Bakker. Title : OBJECTS TO USE ..This book is still available at www.ftn-books.com.
Piet Dirkx daily …740
Piet Dirkx cigarbox 740
Art prices… gallery versus auction
Today i added to my inventory a book by Auke de Vries for his Museum Wiesbaden exhibition from 1990. i knew the title and had sold copies before, but what made this one special is that on ca. 10 of the pages yellow post-it’s were fixed with gallery prices in guilders. I leafed through the book and was surprised to find the prices to be as steep as 50.000 guilders. It was not long ago that i attended 2 auctions where several small and larger sculptures by Auke de Vries were sold , fetching prices between euro 2500 and 4000 for a larger sculpture.
I compared these with the 1990 gallery prices within the Wiesbaden catalogue and found that prices had devaluated with over 60% when compared with the actual auction prices including premium in 2017. Of course the gallery fees are between 40 and 50%, but when you consider that money has devaluated too in these past two and a half decades the devaluation of Modern Art of a very good artist like Auke de Vries is over 80% compared with the original gallery price. Should i then still buy art?……YES! because you can have tremendous pleasure from it. You search for and find good art and enjoy it at home when you bought or rent it and yes… you support the artist with your buy, but if you ask me , should i buy art as an investment? my advise would be …be careful for the artist you select, because most of them will not be worth very much after a few decades.
But when you are patient, that means a period of 20+ years, you will discover that works by the artist you admire start to appear at auction and are much more affordable and even can be bought by most collectors for as little as a few hundred euro. I can give you an example of a great Arie van Geest which recently was added to our collection for an extremely fair amount.
You only learn of the auction records by artist like Warhol, Koons and Hirst, but you can ask yourself…are these works by these artists really that special or are they a marketing product… a true hype? if i did not know who the artist is and did not know the value of a work …would i buy it ? In the case of Auke de Vries i personally would do so at the price level that i recently experienced at auction, but for the prices in the Wiesbaden catalogue i would “pass”. Art should not be bought as an investment and i dare say that the great collectors in the world never have bought art for its value, but because they admire the artist and his or her works and you should do the same, because there is still some great art to be found and bought at fair prices. www.ftn-blog.com and www.ftn-books.com have art for sale which is published in edition and is still affordable.
Piet Dirkx daily …739
Piet Dirkx cigarbox 739
Vassilakis Takis (1925)
Day 4 of my “forgotten artists” blogs is devoted to Vassilakis Takis. Now 92 years of age, but forgotten by most. It used to be different because in the 60’s his name was quite known among art lovers , specially the one interested in Kinetic art. His Grec origins never showed in his works , no classical sculptures for him, but investigating the relations between art and science, resulting in Kinetic works which were original. Still he never became the household name as others from his generation have become. No Soto, Staudt or Agam stature for Takis, but he had his moments in art, which resulted in some nice and very hard to find catalogues. 2 of them available at www.ftnbooks.com. Since the early 1950s, he has been exploring these new aesthetic territories, creating three-dimensional works of art that incorporate invisible energies as a fourth, active element. Takis, who describes himself as an “instinctive scientist,” employs powerful, elemental forces to generate the forms, movements, and musical sounds of both his static and kinetic works but never became famous for his kinetic art and that is a pity, because his approach is original, which resulted in somne nice works of which some of them are in some pubic collections ( mainly in France).
Piet Dirkx daily …738
Piet Dirkx cigarbox 738
Jan Montyn… author/painter/etcher
I never had seen a Montyn work until the early ~Seventies. At that timne i bought my first Jan Montyn etching. A blue bird, simplified on a typical Montyn background. It was a fairly large etching and i had it on the wall for over 10 years and then i changed it for a photograph of Lucien Clergue. It is in a drawer for 3 decades now, but i still like it . It is the same with all other Montyn etchings. They have something dreamlike and combine realism with abstract parts and all have great technique. Some years after i bought this etching i read the autobiography of Jan Montyn in which he tells the story of his early life. Specially the days he spent in the Foreign Legion, was shipwrecked as a sailor for the Kriegsmarine and was sent to the Eastern Front near Koerlandand and particpated in the battles over there. A colorfull figure, who perhaps did not always make the right (political) choices in his life, but his art still stands out and deserves to be appreciated apart from these. An excelllent title , published on the occasion of 75th birthday in 1999 is available at www.ftn-books.com
Piet Dirkx daily …737
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Heringa / van Kalsbeek at DE FUNDATIE
The first time i saw these sculptures by Heringa / van Kalsbeek was at the time i was still working at the Gemeentemuseum Den Haag.
It was 1999 and i was impressed. These resin sculptures looked almost accidental. But they are far from it. These sculptures are created by guidance and when finished they have shape, form, volume and color thought out by the artists. Since 1999 they have had their installations shown in many venues. One of them was the DE FUNDATIE in 2006 which catalogue is now available at www.ftn-books.com.
Heringa /van Kalsbeek are important contemporary artists and are included in the dutch series of portraits on dutch modern art ” HOLLANDSE MEESTERS”
