Tag: new york

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Lee Bontecou and Will Leewens

It was for over 3 months in my mind that i had to visit the Lee Bontecou exhibition in the Gemeentemuseum Den Haag, but because of a full schedule i had to wait until the last day of the exhibition, which was yesterday. I already bought the catalogue , but did not look into it, so all works on exhibit were new to me and i must say that more than half was very impressive. There was a large Sandbox filled with little objects, the wall with sketches and some wall sculptures and “mobiles” which were very impressive, but part was sketches and other little objects which were far less fascinating, some even boring.

What struck me was that artists all over the world must influence each other. Here is an example of a work by Will Leewens and the one by Bontecou. Colors, size and even some of the 3d objects look the same. Both are finished in the early sixties and although i doubt that they have known each other . I ams sure bot were influenced in some way by others and excecuted their works in a similar way.

 

The exhibition is history now, but what remains is a great catalogue which is still available at the Gemeentemuseum shop and of course for older publications on Bontecou and Leewens you can visit www.ftn-books.com

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David Salle (1952)

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David Salle…..still one of te great names in Modern Art and still very famous in the US, but his works tend to be forgotten a little bit in Europe after he had had many important shows here in the eighties and nineties. Painter, graphic artist, cinema director and photographer Salle is a multi disciplined artist who was one of the first living artist who reached star status in the art world after his works were soled for over a million dollar at auction. Personally i do not think any painting is worth so much money, because i  think art is to be consumed and admired and not bought or sold as an investment. An artist who’s works are bought after he/she died is an exception. The works have proven themselves and it is important for museum to show the works of an artist in relation to other works of art, but….for living artists like Salle, Hirst and Koons ART has become a way of making money ( and a lot if it). The idea behind the work is less important than the interest t should create with buyers and investors. So my advice …buy what you personally think is worth to look at, admire and collect it and if it is more expensive … pay a little more for it because you will enjoy the work every day you look at it.

Books on Salle are available at www.ftn-books.com

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Andy Warhol in Stockholm (1968)

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The sixties were the time that Pop Art was introduced in Europe and one of the venues where a large exhibition was held was the Moderna Museet in Stockholm. Of course the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam has had its Pop Art and Warhol exhibitions in those days, but what makes the Stockholm exhibition stand out, was the catalogue which was published with the Andy Warhol exhibition in 1968. Not a small booklet , designed by Wim Crouwel of 40+ pages, but a large catalogue containing approx. 500 pages filled with art and photography. . A true documentary publication with the most important works by Warhol and over 300 photographs with documentary photographs on Warhol and his circle of friends. the Factory photography was done by Billy Name. Spontaneous and random photography, giving great insight in the world of Warhol and his Friends in the surroundings of the Factory. This is one of the most important Andy Warhol catalogues ever published and now available at www.ftn-books.com

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Robert Mapplethorpe in KUNSTHAL/ Rotterdam.

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An important exhibition in KUNSTHAL / Rotterdam. To be shown until the 27th of August there is a large Retrospective on Robert Mapplethorpe, one of the great photographers from last century who died sadly from HIV in 1989.

https://www.kunsthal.nl/nl/plan-je-bezoek/tentoonstellingen/robert-mapplethorpe/

Robert Mapplethorpe ( November 4, 1946 – March 9, 1989) was an American photographer, known for his sensitive yet blunt treatment of controversial subject-matter in the large-scale, highly stylized black and white medium of photography. His work featured an array of subjects, including celebrity portraits, male and female nudes, self-portraits and still-life images of flowers. His most controversial work is that of the underground BDSM scene in the late 1960s and early 1970s of New York City. The homoeroticism of this work fueled a national debate over the public funding of controversial artwork.

This is the text which Wikipedia uses to describe Mapplethorpe in a nutshell, but what is less known is that Mapplethorpe exhibitions were held in the Netherlands at a very early stage of his career in galerie Jurka. His earliest exhibition over there was in 1979, well before his works were collected and appreciated by many.

1979

“Robert Mapplethorpe: 1970-75,” Robert Samuel Gallery, New York

Texas Gallery, Houston, Texas

“Contact,” Robert Miller Gallery, New York

Galerie Jurka, Amsterdam

“Trade Off,” International Center of Photography, New Y

1978

La Remise du Parc Gallery, Paris

“Film and Stills,” Robert Miller Gallery, New York

The Chrysler Museum, Norfolk, Virginia

Langton Street Gallery, San Francisco, California

Simon Lowinsky Gallery, San Francisco, California

La Remise du Parc Gallery, Paris

Los Angeles Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, California

1977

“Portraits,”Holly Solomon Gallery, New York

“Flowers,” Holly Solomon Gallery, New York

“Erotic Pictures,” The Kitchen, New York

1976

“Polaroids,”Light Gallery, New York

This exhibition means his photographs will come back to the Netherlands and one can see for himself what development and progression Mapplethorpe has made since his first exhibitions over here. And yes… the Jurka catalogue from 1980 is available at www.ftn-books.com

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Ilja (Ilya) Kabakov (1933)

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Born in Ukrainia in 1933, he later immigrated in 1987 to Graz in Austria and after that he became an American citizen and moved to New York. Since 1987 his works /installations are executed by him and his niece Emilia, whi=o would later become his wife. Kabakov s considered to be one of the foremost installation/conceptual artists in the world and because of this status his works were presented and collected by the Stedelijk Museum. Many publications, including HET GROTE ARCHIEF,

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are still within in the collection, but rarely exhibited. Kabakov is one of those artists who are lesser known with the great public, but who works will become more and more important in the years to come. What his works make for me more interesting is the beautiful books which and catalogues which are published with his exhibitions and 2 of them are for sale at www.ftn-books.com

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Brice Marden (1938)

It took some while for me to appreciate Brice Marden, that was because the first works i encountered by him where his monochromatic paintings, which i did not like very much at that time ( now i do!),  but influenced by Robert Rauschenberg ( he was his assistant during a couple of years) , multi panelled and more colorful paintings began to emerge from his studio.

That was the same period i became interested in Brice Marden. There was a nice exhibition in 1981 in the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, which Crouwel designed catalogue is now a true collectors item ( available with other Marden publications at www.ftn-books.com ).

The list of collections in which Brice Marden is present is almost endless and contains all major Modern Art Museums in the world. One has to be mentioned, because The MOMA was the first to present a large retrospective on this young artist. It was in 1975 and this early interest resulted in having one of the largest Marden collections in the world.

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Gerard Garouste (1946)

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Gerard Garouste came to fame in the early 80’s and his since had worldwide exhibition. Painting and theater decorations made him famous outside France.

In 1980, he had his first art show at the Durand-Dessert gallery, showing figurative, mythological, and allegorical paintings. This show brought him national recognition, and then, international. His first international show took place in New York City in 1982 at the Holly Solomon Gallery. Others followed, such as those at the Leo Castelli Gallery in New York and in Sperone, Italy. He was the only French artist to be invited to the Zeitgeist at Berlin. Institutional recognition came in 1987, at the CAPC of Bordeaux (Centre d’arts plastiques contemporains de Bordeaux), where he presented a combination of oils on canvas and acrylics on homespun, and then at the Fondation Cartier.

Garouste has executed works and decorations for various endeavors: paintings for the Élysée Palace, sculptures for Évry Cathedral, the ceiling of the theater at Namur, and for the church of Notre-Dame de Talant, stained glass. In 1989, he did the curtain for the Théâtre du Châtelet.

An important step for Garouste was the founding in 1991 of the association The Source, which sets itself the task of helping culturally underprivileged young people to achieve personal development through artistic expression.

He received an order in 1996 for a monumental work for the National Library of France mixing painting and wrought iron. Sculpture and engraving were attracting him more and more, as well as illustration for all sorts of writings, from Don Quixote to the Haggadah.

In 2001, he presented at the Fondation Cartier Ellipse, an arrangement of canvasses mounted on a construction of his own design.

Since 2001, he has been represented by the Daniel Templon Gallery.

The site of www.ftn-books.com has only one title on Garouste, but it is an important one and this only publication does not mean that Garouste is not important…No , Garouste is one of the most important living french contemporary artist of our days.

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The DYLABY correspondence

Yesterday, i dedicated my blog to the Tinguely exhibition in the Stedelijk Museum and promised to blog on the correspondence for the DYLABY ( Dynamisch Labyrinth) exhibition. Possibly the most important exhibition in the Stedelijk Museum in the 60’s.

I blogged on the DYLABY catalogue some months ago…available at www.ftn-books.com,

but this extremely large and complex exhibition required thorough preparation. In the current Tinguely exhibition there is a showcase in which the letters from the invited artists are presented and because i have a great admiration for Tinguely and Sandberg , i had to photograph the correspondence for my own archives. Because the light above and the glass in between make it hard to make a good quality photograph, there is a shadow cast on the paper, but still text and names can be read and i think it is nice for all interested to read about the invitations and preparations for the DYLABY exhibition. Let me know what you think about them!

dylaby-adylaby-idylaby-hdylaby-gdylaby-fdylaby-edylaby-ddylaby-cdylaby-bdylaby-docs

 

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Gerard Petrus Fieret (1924-2009)

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If you ask the many photograph collectors in the Netherlands….who is the most important photographer from the 60’s and 70’s in the Netherlands?…my guess is more than 50% percent will answer…FIERET.

For the last 2 decades in his lifetime, Fieret led a secluded life, out of the way from ordinary people …feeding his pigeons on a daily basis and making drawings…many many drawings. He even locked himself up for almost a month to decorate an entire room within the Gemeentemuseum with his drawings.

But in the early sixties and seventies his main activity was making photographs. Making them from a very personal perspective and “signing” them with studio stamps all over the photo. Fieret had a keen eye and took his photographs from a different angle and perspective, making them stand out from other photo’s from these decades. Favorite of his were young woman who posed for him and of course many street scenes and thus documenting the sixties in the Netherlands. Since 15 years or so the work of Fieret has been exhibited in other countries outside the Netherlands too. the Deborah Bell gallery showed his works for the first time in the US and this catalogue a.o.  is available at www.ftn-books.com

This is what Gaby Wood said about the first time she encountered the photo by Fieret:

Like most people outside Holland, I had never seen Fieret’s work before, and the Rijksmuseum’s examples are not, it turns out, all that typical. He is best known for his female nudes, but the images I saw were more ethereal. Nevertheless, I was drawn to them immediately: a large, dark print showing a milky-white little girl, blurred almost to the point of abstraction; a faded interior, so fuzzy it bordered on double-exposure; the self-portrait of a bearded man, in a style that looked barely intentional but whose subject seemed full of concentration.

The prints themselves were rough: full-bleed, manhandled and mildewed around the edges; brashly signed in fat-tipped black pen. Some of them had been stamped several times across the front: “Copyright Gerrit Petrus Fieret”, defaced and claimed at the same time. They appeared to have been discarded – not just because of their strange presentation but because they still felt feverish with experiment, as if they were pages torn from a sketchbook, or pictures of memories rather than of actual scenes.

The effect is hard to describe: photography is a realist medium – it’s not supposed to be able to sketch or imagine. But evidently, for a decade beginning in the mid-Sixties, Gerard Fieret’s work did. Looking at it in the museum it was impossible not to wonder: who was this man, and how did his pictures get that way?

I have heard that in the next few years the collection of photographs by Fieret will be travellng all over the world . If i know of dates and venues i will post them on this site.

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Paul Kooiker – Hotel New York

The first time i saw work  by Kooiker was about 15 years ago and he never stops to amaze and surprise me. His first exhibitions were with Willem van Zoetendaal in Amsterdam and during that time he was first presented as one of the upcoming and leading photographers in the Netherlands. Together with Arno Nollen he was considered to have a highly original point of view on contemporary photography and because of his subjects ( young and older women ) he was presented in an exhibition in the Fotomuseum together with the godfather of this kind of photography…. Gerards Petrus Fieret.

The book on Hotel New York was printed in a very small edition and is one of the nicest collectable photography books i have encountered in recent years. Beautiful publication which was presented to the residents of Hotel New York Rotterdam as a reminder of their stay. Text and photography, design and printwork all are excellent. Hard to find….. but still available at www.ftn-books.com

 

wilfried

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