Scottish artist Douglas Gordon began his career as a performance artist, but evolved into a diverse oeuvre encompassing video and film, sound works, photographic objects, and texts. Good versus bad is a recurring theme. He transforms familiar objects, such as photos of famous personalities, often with a result somewhere between humor and dismay. One of Gordon’s most famous works is 24h Psycho (1993), in which he slows down Hitchcock’s infamous film Psycho (1960) to 24 hours, removing the tension and completely changing the experience of the film.
Douglas Gordon has had numerous solo exhibitions, including at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Musée d’Art Moderne, Paris; MOCA, Los Angeles; Kunsthaus Bregenz, Austria; Museo Tamayo, Mexico City; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg; Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow; Van Abbemuseum, and Tate Britain, London. In 1996, he received the Turner Prize. In the same year, Gordon was one of the invited artists for Skulptur Projekte Münster, and in 1997, he represented Great Britain at the Venice Biennale.
In response to the increasing transience or devaluation of images in our current media culture, René Jolink (1958) offers an answer through his paintings. Tineke Reijnders writes in the catalogue about his secondary way of painting the following: “By creating distance, he paradoxically enables himself to choose motifs that are close to him. Sometimes they are 16th century paintings that mean a lot to him, other times they are images related to his childhood in Spain, sometimes they are things that are literally close by, like the floor of his studio. The outer layer, that of the disintegrating image, is also that of the seeping image, which is nothing less than the promise of the restored image in all its glory.” Mark Kremer’s statement from 1993 still holds true: “The motifs in these paintings are painted in such a way that they shift and almost merge into a haze that lies on the surface of the painting. The appearance of the motifs is ambiguous: one moment they emerge from a misty distance, the next they are absorbed into the flat plane. These paintings seem to hesitate between evoking and suspending images.”
www.ftn-books.com has the van Abbe publication from 1996 now available.
Since 2003, Henri Jacobs has been engaged in an ongoing series of drawings. These drawings, known as the Journal Drawings, originated from a project he undertook as a teacher. In this project, Jacobs instructed his students to depict anything that had a significant impact on them or caught their attention throughout a given day. Inspired by this exercise, he adopted it as a method for his own artistic practice, resulting in an ongoing collection of drawings. Within this series, he explores different motifs and forms, continuously abandoning them to make room for new research and experimentation.
Jacobs’s drawings showcase a virtuosic technique, skillfully executed yet playful. The images range from abstract geometric shapes and patterns to stylized portraits, landscapes, and architectural forms. Frequent allusions to art history and renowned artists such as Matisse and Jasper Johns also appear. Essentially, the Journal Drawings serve as a continual process of creative exploration, as Henri Jacobs constantly challenges himself to redefine and reinvent his drawings.
www.ftn-books.com has the van Abbemuseum catalog designed by Arlette Brouwers now available.
A new era for Dutch photography begins in the early 1970s. It is no longer just the content of the photo that the photographer focuses on. It goes beyond that. Space, light, and timing are played with. Constantly searching for hidden elements, creating light and shadows, abstractions, and a certain surrealistic feeling. All of this suggests a world beyond the frame of the photo. This work pays tribute to the great masters who were able to portray space, light, and the depth of bright tones in their paintings in a mysterious way (source: Lorenzo Merlo, Contemporary photography in the Netherlands 1980).
During the same period, Rudi Fuchs is appointed as the director of the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven. Thanks to him and the aforementioned developments, artists from Eindhoven are once again in the spotlight. Fuchs actively participates in conversations in the ateliers in Eindhoven, thus getting to know the attitudes and positions that will partly determine the policy of the Van Abbemuseum. Hans Biezen, René Daniëls, Piet Dirkx, and Stijn Peeters are some of the well-known Brabant artists of that time. Inspiring projects such as the artists’ initiative De Fabriek arise in the vicinity of the Van Abbemuseum, something that would still be unthinkable in the Randstad (source: Michiel Morel, under the smoke of Van Abbe 2011).
Hans Biezen finds himself at the heart of the art world in Eindhoven during these developments. As a sculptor by training, Biezen is self-taught in the field of photography. This is not a coincidence, as he wants to photograph as honestly and unbiasedly as possible. Photography is more than sculpting to him; it is a means to interpret reality in his own way and with feeling. Initially, Biezen focuses his photography on situations that allow him to take beautiful and powerful photos. But at some point, he begins to see this as a limitation of his photographic possibilities. Therefore, Biezen simplifies his photography into mainly a documentary form.
www.ftn-books.com has now one of the very first Biezen publications he made for the van Abbemuseum available.
Two names triggered me to look a little closer at the works of Pieter Stoop. The fact that the book now available at www.ftn-books.com comes from the personal colelction of Henk Peeters and….. Rudi Fuchs, who was responsible for showing Stoop his works at the van Abbemuseum. Stoop was influenced by Soutine,de Kooning and van Velde and it shows, but what becomes clear after studying more works from him is that he deswtilled a style of his own from these influences.
The following text comes from Wikipedia. I did not know the artist but i was impressed with a publication that was published in the Sixties with the van Abbemuseum exhibition. This publication is now availabel at www.ftn-books.com
From 1945 to 1950 Heerich studied fine arts at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf under Ewald Mataré. From 1950 to 1954, he belonged, together with Joseph Beuys, to the master class of his professor. At that time, he chiefly produced sculptures representing animals and drawings of plants. In 1954, he left the Düsseldorf academy and worked as an artist and art teacher. Since 1959, he used cardboard as his artistic material. He presented 10 of these “Kartonplastiken” at the documenta IV (1968) in Kassel.
Heerich emphasized that for him, “cardboard, like polystyrene, had no specifically aesthetic or historical connotations, the materials are value-neutral to the largest possible extent.” Furthermore, the artist was not primarily “concerned with the manifestation of an art object, but with making an idea material in terms of a specific problem: how space can be presented and formed.”
From 1969 to 1988 he was a professor at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. In 1974 he became also a member of the Academy of Arts, Berlin.
From 1982 to 1994 he created eleven exhibition pavilions for the Museum Insel Hombroich, which were called “chapels in the landscape”. His elemental sculptures became the design base for these gallery pavilions.
In 1978 Heerich received the Will Grohmann Prize in Berlin. In 1987 he received the Max Beckmann Prize in Frankfurt am Main and in 1995 the Anton Stankowski Prize in Stuttgart.
There is a reason for using the above photograph in which Marlene Dumas stands next to Rene Daniëls. The iconic book for her first major museum exhibition was published by the van Abbemuseum and dedicated to René Daniëls, who had a cerebral haemorrhage in 1987. They boht attended Ateliers ’63 , but did not study in the same period, but after their studies they met at several exhibitions in which they were presented as young promissing artists from the Ateliers ’63.
After they met at the Stedelijk Museum exhibition they became friends and had several (group) exhibitions together.
With the painting “De gele vingers van de kunstenaar”, she had already begun to establish herself as a promising young artist. Born in Cape Town, South Africa, in 1953, she had moved to the Netherlands to study at the independent art school Ateliers ’63 in Haarlem, near Amsterdam, from 1976 to 1978. Founded in 1963, the institute is now known as De Ateliers and located in Amsterdam. In 1978, at merely 25 years of age, Dumas exhibited her work for the first time as part of the group exhibition Atelier 15 (10 Young Artists) at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam and in 1982 participated in Documenta 7.
Painted in 1985, De gele vingers van de kunstenaar belongs to the breakthrough body of work The Eyes of the Night Creatures that Dumas created after a five-year hiatus from painting, during which time she had primarily created works on paper. While her drawings oeuvre had been already been subject to her first museum solo exhibition at the Centraal Museum Utrecht in 1984, the debut of this series at Galerie Paul Andriesse in Amsterdam in 1985 marked the triumphant return to painting and figuration in Dumas’ practice and signaled the emergence of what would become one of the most daring and influential figurative contemporary painters.
Invitation for Galerie Paul Andriesse, Marlene Dumas, The Eyes of the Night Creatures, 1985
Many of the works from the series now reside in public collections, including the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, the Museum voor Moderne Kunst, Arnhem, the Art Institute of Chicago and the Centraal Museum Utrecht.
Installation view of The Eyes of the Night Creatures series in Marlene Dumas, Image as Burden, Tate Modern, London, 2015
It is important to remember that the art world in Amsterdam at the time was very small, with only two major contemporary art galleries and many of the artists, gallerists, critics and curators knowing each other very well. Recalling the great lineage of French Impressionist bourgeois café scenes, De gele vingers van de kunstenaar captures a late night art world gathering of friends that smoke, drink and talk.
The diptych is indeed based on photographs that Dumas took during nights out with her friends in Amsterdam. On the left, eminent artist and close friend René Daniëls is depicted holding a cigarette with yellow fingers, evocative of fresh paint, but also the staining that occurs from extensive smoking — hence the corresponding title.
De gele vingers van de kunstenaar speaks to a particular moment in time in which Dumas and René Daniëls were on the rise as the most promising young painters in the Netherlands. While Dumas and Daniëls did not overlap in their studies at Ateliers ’63, they had notably been included in the 1978 Stedelijk Museum group exhibition Atelier 15 (10 Young Artists).
The catalogue MISS INTERPRETED which is now available at www.ftn-books.com honours this friendship and the appreciation of Daniels his art by Marlene Dumas.
It must have been around 1989 that i first appreciated the works by Richard Paul Lohse. The Haags Gemeentemuseum showed a magnificent painting by Lohse , which has since been on permanent display in the Museum. Responsible was Rudi Fuchs ,who had an admiration for Lohse too. When he was a director at the van Abbemuseum he showed the works by Lohse frequently. Among these times a retropective in 1971 for which a silkscreened poster was printed ( available at www.ftn-books.com). Now i have added the “sister” poster which was made for the Moderna Museet in Stockholm in 1971. Two equal collectable posters and a rare commbination to be offered at one place for sale.
Jan van Toorn dies last Friday at the age of 88 years.
Tragic newss this morning , but one of the greatest of all dutch designers from last century dies at the age of 88 years.
I have followed his career with all kinds of examples of his design through all decades of last half century. Many of these are also available at www.ftn-books.com
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. Many of them stand out and some are also known outside our borders, since many of his designs were done for exhibitions outside the Netherlands. His style….highly recognizable and less formal than Crouwel is known for. van Toorn sits in between Sandberg and Crouwel and developed over the years a style of his own. He was one of the main designers for the van Abbemuseum and a director for the Jan van Eyck academy and beside the van Abbemuseum made design for PTT Nederland and the Cultural Foreign office. His archives are now with the Unviversity of Amsterdam.
During his life Van Toorn received two prestigious art prices for his designs. First the H.N. Werkmanprijs in 1972 and second in 1985 the BNO Piet Zwart award.
Over 3 years ago I published my first blog on René Daniëls, who I consider to be one of the great dutch artist from the last century. It took me some time but I now have the most important publications on René Daniëls in my inventory. recently I have added Lentebloesem (1990) and The words are not in their proper place (2011). These together with the van Abbemuseum publications makes the best collection of René Daniëls. possible. All books 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
