I knew that i was right when i noticed about a year ago that it was a real pitty that the Velum by Keith Haring was removed by the Stedelijk Museum, but now i got notified that it is back. From this day you can marvel at this extremely large Keith Haring and wonder why it has been away such a long time. The velum by Keith Haring…… it is back !
For some excellent Keith Haring publications visit www.ftn-books.com
Arguably the most iconic Pop Art artist was Roy Lichtenstein. I know for certain that Andy Warhol is a much more household and famous name. But when you ask me , which artist i associate with Pop Art , …..it is definitely Roy Lichtenstein. I love comics and because of that, Lichtenstein was one of the first modern artists i began to follow and appreciate. His works with enlarged comic frames won me over for him and it happened that these frames , enlarged to an immense sized canvas, became the works for which Lichtenstein would become famous. There is one multi panelled work “As I opened Fire” which is in the collection of the Stedelijk Museum which i now must have seen dozens of times and it never stops impressing me.
Lichtenstein name is now one of the great names in Modern Art, but this has not always been the case. It took some years to become one of the greats , because Warhol was in the centre of the modern art world and Lichtenstein just a mere satellite. For me however, Lichtenstein is the artist that never disappoints and is the best Pop Art artist….period.
There are some greate Roy Lichtenstein publications available at www.ftn-books.com
Alex Vermeulen is a dutch multi-media rtist who has had several museum presentations in the Netherlands. In 1993 Vermeulen moved to Amsterdam and founded in 1995 “SOH-States of Humanity” and the Syndicaat foundation. A year later he presented his final film-book, as part of a large installation, Fuga Futuri,[4] at Amsterdam’s Stedelijk Museum (1996). The chief character introduced in this show for the first time, was the stylized humanoid “Eggy”, named after his egg-like shape. In the following fifteen years sculptures of various forms of the enigmatic Eggy would appear in a number of projects mounted in public places around the world including New York (1996) where Vermeulen asked those who passed to select their favorite Eggy and relate it to their personal life.
There is an excellent piece to be foumnd on Wikipedia, but to show something of his qualities as an artist here is the A SMILE FOR A SMILE video
there are some publications by Vermeulen availabel at www.ftn-books.com
Influenced by Marcel Duchamp, Jasper Johns and H.C. Westermann, Ruscha developed an art form for himself. Ruscha achieved recognition for paintings incorporating words and phrases and for his many photographic books, all influenced by the deadpan irreverence of the Pop Art movement. His textual, flat paintings have been linked with both the Pop Art movement and the beat generation, but for me Edward Ruscha is foremost a Pop Art artist. Possibly this is because one of my favorite Stedelijk Museum catalogues from the Seventies is this 1976 Ruscha catalogue which was designed by Wim Crouwel and filled with typical Pop Art related Ruscha paintings.
Text and image blend into each other , catching your attention with a word or a phrase. Ruscha stayed true to this kind of painting and has since become one of the great names in the world of art. Checking my inventory i found that i have many interesting publications available at www.ftn-books.com. An excellent opportunity to find out why Ruscha is important in the world of contemporary art.
Here is an interesting video on Ed Ruscha by the Tate
If you look at the Han Schuil paintings from recent years . Your first association is Pop Art. But look at them in retrospect and you must conclude that it is a natural development from his earlier works into these most recent ones.
Since the mid eighties he stayed true to his preferred material. An aluminium bearer, painted with alkyd and enamel. I still admire his works and because of the use of aluminium i think they stand out, giving the works both an abstract and an artificial industrial look. Schuil is for me one of the great dutch artists . www.ftn-books.com has some Han Schuil titles worth collecting.
Personally i think that Jaap van den Ende is the only true successor of Jan Schoonhoven. Specially his early works have the similar qualities as the ones Schoonhoven made in the sixties and early seventies. The Stedelijk Museum has some excellent examples of these early works in which little cut out pieces of grey plastic foil are placed on a white surface according a well though over pattern. the System and pattern make the composition, but thus creating a fascinating , lively work of art.
A little like the way Struycken worked, but with a simplicity that resembles the great early Sol LeWitt works. I love this early works, Later he changed his style into more colorful compositions, but always along a line of well thought over abstract contructivist forms. Since 1997 his works become far more realistic. Seascapes, parks and landscapes are all painted with perfection . a fascinating artist which you can encounter in several dutch museum collections. There are some nice van den Ende publications available at www.ftn-books.com
Jaap Nanninga was born in Winschoten in the north of the Netherlands but after travels to Germany and Poland he settled in Den Haag in 1936, where he stayed and worked his entire life. meber of the famous Posthoorn group het met his friends artist for drinks and dinners at the POSTHOORN cafe at the Voorhout in Den Haag ( and yes…it is still there and serves the finest “Bitterballen” in Den Haag. He received his artist eductaion from Werkman and Wiegers and stayed for a short moment with Geer van Velde in Paris. These 3 artists made Nanninga the artist which we know nowadays. Abstract compositions rooted in the Fifties . a little Cobra mixed with abstract expresionism. Many dutch museum have some great Nanninga’s, but one museum i would like to mention specially is the FIGURA painting in the van Abbemuseum collection. Powerful and typically Fifties abstraction.
www.ftn-books.com has some nice Nanninga titles available
Because of the Robert Mueller that is in the new at these days ai was reminded of the Robert Muller who made some wonderful drawings and sculptures in the sixies and presented those in an exhibition in the Stedelijk Museum in 1968 ( Crouwel designed catalogue).
Try to find some information on Robert Muller at these days and it is almost impossible to find anything except for the books i placed on the internet for sale at www.ftn-books.com. Perhaps Muller is almost forgotten or the other FBI ROBERT MUELLER pushes all information away, but not deservedly. This Robert Muller i admire has made some of the nicest most impressive little sculptures i know of in the sixties and is a typical sixties artist and deserves a place among the best sixties artists.
Quote from a Joel Fisher catalogue :
“Sometimes, though not always, old meanings invade the new forms and hold on with a tenacity that cannot be broken. At other times the forms are innocently open to any of the uses we might make of them.”
Joel Fisher is the master of making little works of art that mock with the abstract figuration. He was not that frequently invited to have an exhibition in the Netherlands , but i know of 2 occasions that there was one. The first in 1978 in the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, which catalogue is available at www.ftn-books.com
and secondly a far more obscure exhibition in gallery Art Affairs in 1993. Both were rare occasions to see his works, but what i remember most is the pure simplicity of his drawings.
With a few lines he shows that he is almost perfect in his composition, which is a true quality. I like it very much when with so little effort such a nice result is created. These are not random lines, but carefully created compositions. It is the quality i like so much in an artist. and for me Fisher operates with his art in the same category as Miro and Ouborg.
Joan Jonas was born in 1936 in New York. A pioneer of performance and video art, Jonas works in video, installation, sculpture, and drawing, often collaborating with musicians and dancers to realize improvisational works that are equally at home in the museum gallery and on the theatrical stage. Drawing on mythic stories from various cultures, Jonas invests texts from the past with the politics of the present.
Just a short biography which can be found everywhere on the internet, but a visual example of her work says more than a thousand words.
and the interview she has done with Art21
www.ftn-books.com has only one book available by Joan Jonas. It is the exhibition catalogue for her Stedelijk Museum exhibition in 1994.
