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Centre Pompidou Paris
MONDRIAN/DE STIJL
December 1, 2010 – March 21, 2011
The MONDRIAN/DE STIJL exhibition at the Centre Pompidou links the career of one of the greatest abstract painters of the 20th century to the story of one of the most fertile art movements of European modernism.
A key element of any understanding of the springs of modern art, between the end of the first decade of the century and the close of the Twenties the avant-garde movement De Stijl (Style) elaborated a vision of both art and society that aspired to universality, nourishing the ambition for a “total art.” It was in Paris, between 1912 and 1938, that Piet Mondrian, the central figure of the movement and its most famous representative, pursued his quest for visual harmony. Seeking a universal language of forms and primary colours, his radical abstraction sought to go beyond painting.
For Mondrian and other De Stijl artists, the total work of art was the key to a new world, the symbol of a renewed human community characterised by a perfect equilibrium in which each element combines with every other to form a whole.
The exhibition consists of two sections. The first, devoted to Mondrian, focuses on the drawings and paintings he produced in Paris between 1912 and 1938. Through some hundred major works, it shows the painter’s development from Cubism to Neo-Plasticism, from “natural reality to abstract reality,” reflecting the artistic dynamism that marked the painter’s years in the French capital.
This is the first time since 1969 that a large-scale exhibition of Mondrian’s work has been staged in the city where most of it was indeed produced.
The second section looks at De Stijl, examining it history in parallel with Mondrian’s career, through an outstanding selection of paintings, drawings and photographs. It has as its guiding thread the cross-disciplinary practice of the movement’s members, notably revealing the complexity of the collaborations between the painters, architects and designers who rallied around the three leading figures of Piet Mondrian, Theo van Doesburg and Gerrit Rietveld. To accompany this unprecedented exhibition, Éditions du Centre Pompidou are to publish two major works: Mondrian (ed. Brigitte Leal), and De Stijl, 1917–1931 (ed. Frédéric Migayrou and Aurélien Lemonier). Other publications will include Mondrian/De Stijl, an album of the exhibition; an edition of Mondrian’s French writings; the republication of his key text of 1920, Réalité naturelle, réalité abstraite; and a special number of the journal Les Cahiers du Musée.
PIET MONDRIAN (1872 – 1944)
Born in the Netherlands in 1872, Mondrian first received an academic training in Amsterdam, where he gained his first commissions (traditional portraits, decorative work for churches and private houses). At the start of the new century he was regularly painting, in a Symbolist vein, the farmhouses and countryside near his family home at Winterswijk, and already showing a marked interest in the rhythmic elements of composition (trees and fences), flatness (with the raising of the horizon line to counter the effect of depth) and the geometrization of forms.
Having moved to Paris in 1912, Mondrian discovered Picasso’s Cubism and abandoned the Divisionist- or Fauve-inspired painting, sometimes marked by theosophical influences, of his years in Domburg and Oele, to embark on the quest for a “universal pictorial language.”
Between 1912 and 1920, he gradually developed his Cubism towards Neo-Plasticism (the new, abstract, plastic art), moving from “natural reality to abstract reality.” Starting from the analytical decomposition of form, he developed a “pure” visual art based on the relationship between coloured surfaces and guided by a logic of harmony and equilibrium between elements. This horizontal/vertical dialectic, in which pure colours (blue, red, yellow) are juxtaposed with non-colours (black, white, grey) in a combinatorial geometry that abolishes perspective, allows for an infinity of modular variations. On this basis Mondrian produced during this period several series of paintings through which he developed his theology of Neo-Plasticism. These works are ordered in consistent, systematically developed series – the “plus-minus” works, the square compositions, the diamonds, the grids. “Everything is composed by relation and reciprocity. Colour exists only through another colour, dimension is defined by another dimension, there is no position except in opposition to another position.” The painting is open, seemingly a fragment of a much larger ensemble. The division of the canvas into rectangles echoes the frame, the wall on which the painting hangs, the room, the city about… Neo-Plasticism is a vision of precision that ties pictorial order to a social, spiritual and poetical utopia.
In his “sanctuary,” his studio at 26 Rue du Départ in Montparnasse – a space not so much decorated as treated as if it were itself a painting, furniture and easel included, to create a total art space – Mondrian lived meagrely but far from reclusively. This experimental
laboratory served as the headquarters of a considerable operation combining theoretical work, publishing and business, to promote the Neo-Plastic ideal and to develop and exploit his connections among all the abstract currents of Europe (Dada, De Stijl, Abstraction-
Création, etc.).
In 1915, the same studio was the site of his decisive encounter with Theo van Doesburg. In 1918, he launched the of the De Stijl manifesto. In 1921, he showed at Léonce Rosenberg’s Effort Moderne gallery, which also published his treatise Le néoplasticisme: Principe général de l’équivalence plastique, and staged the exhibition “De Stijl” in 1923. In 1925, Mondrian took part, together with other leading abstractionists, in the first international exhibition of non-figurative art, “L’Art d’Aujourd’hui.” In 1926, he did the stage design for Michel Seuphor’s L’Éphémère est éternel. In 1927, he published “Le Home – la Rue – la Cité” in Vouloir, showed at the Salon des Tuileries and exhibited at Jeanne Bucher’s. In 1931, he supported the formation of the Abstraction-Création group. In 1937, he took
part in the exhibition “Origines et développement de l’art international indépendant,” organised at the Jeu de Paume by Yvonne et Christian Zervos. During his twenty years in Paris, Mondrian got to know not only all the artists that mattered – the Delaunays, the Arps, Jean Hélion, Robert Mallet–Stevens, Pierre Chareau, Le Corbusier, the Cubists, the Constructivists, the Dadaists and the abstractionists, but also many young artists such as Calder, who came especially to Paris in 1930 to visit his studio.
In Paris too he found his first collectors, Frenchmen like Charles de Noailles, Americans like Albert Gallatin, Swiss like Alfred Roth, and also his first disciples, such as Jean Gorin and Félix Del Marle, and critics and eulogists like Christian Zervos and Michel Seuphor.
“A poem of right angles,” according to Le Corbusier, the Neo-Plasticist microcosm of 26 Rue du Départ became the crucial reference point of a new vision of the world that subordinated the individual to the universal . As such, it was visited by the greatest photographers
of the time, among them André Kertész, Rogi André and Florence Henri, who immortalised it in pictures published in art journals the whole world over.
Curator: Brigitte Leal
Assistant Director, Collections du Musée national d’art moderne/Centre de création industrielle
DE STIJL AND NEO-PLASTICISM
The Dutch avant-garde movement De Stijl (Style) is an essential key to any understanding of the springs of Modernism. It formed around three central figures: the painters Piet Mondrian and Theo van Doesburg and architect and furniture designer Gerrit Rietveld. Other members of the original group were painters Bart van der Leck, Georges Vantongerloo and Vilmos Huszar, architects JJP Oud, Robert van’t Hoff and Jan Wills, and poet Anthony Kok, who would be joined by graphic designer Piet Zwart and architect Cornelis van Eesteren.
It was in 1918, a year after the official foundation of the group and the publication of the first issue of the journal that publicised and promoted the movement’s teachings that the founders of De Stijl explicitly articulated the aesthetic and social vision that drew them together: the group’s first manifesto called for a new equilibrium between the individual and the universal and for the emancipation of art from the constraints of the cult of individualism. This quest for the utopian and universal might be summed up in the aphorism: “The goal of life is man; the goal of man is Style.”
Both utopian vision and practical engagement in the production of the real in an industrial world, De Stijl drew on the Hegelian tradition and on Theosophy, an esoteric doctrine then popular in the Netherlands and elsewhere. The founders of the movement were however primarily concerned with the formal – pictorial or architectural – expression of the principles of universal harmony. Painting, sculpture, graphics, furniture design, architecture and soon town planning served as the medium of experiment. De Stijl’s creations were multidisciplinary by nature, transcending the traditional academic boundaries between major and minor arts, between decorative art, architecture and urbanism.
The guiding theme of the movement during its fourteen years of productive existence might be taken to be the spirit of the city. The spatiality of the work of art gradually shifts from being the basis for an analysis of the world to a means of construction of the urban
social and political environment. In this respect, the spatialization of the work of art constitutes a specific experience of the world, ordering it and giving substance to community, embodying and making possible the equilibrium between individual and collective, between rational and sensuous, knowing and doing, spiritual and material.
For De Stijl, the priority was to find a formal language that answered to the problems of industrial society in the wake of the Great War and to adumbrate the strategies for the establishment of a new social order.
The method that served the vision was Neo-Plasticism, which at first represented a simple radicalisation of the avant-garde practice of the time. “The Cubists,” said Mondrian, “refuse to take their own artistic revolution to its logical conclusion. The modern sensibility cannot be reduced to the integration of multiple points of view, but must tend towards an immediately universal and rational plastic language.” Van Doesburg, for his part, called for “the elaboration, in connection with the plastic arts, of simple fundamental principles
understandable to all.” It was through the rigorous employment of primary colours alone (blue, yellow, red), unmodulated white and black, and straight lines laid out at right angles, and the limitation of forms and the geometrization of volumes that this brought that
the members of De Stijl invented a new grammar of forms. The analytical simplification of the formal lexicon and the harmonious dynamics of proportion offered no scope for tragedy, in the end projecting aesthetics as a universal.
Curator: Frédéric Migayrou
Assistant Director Musée national d’art moderne/ Centre de création industrielle
Assistant Curator: Aurélien Lemonier
Curator, Department of Architecture, Musée national d’art moderne/ Centre de création industrielle
AROUND THE EXHIBITION
INTERNATIONAL MONDRIAN COLLOQUIUM
WEDNESDAY 9 FEBRUARY 2011, 11 AM – 13 PM, 2.30 PM – 6.30 PM
PETITE SALLE, LEVEL -1
Admission free, subject to availability
To accompany the exhibition “Mondrian / De Stijl,” the Centre Pompidou is organising an international colloquium on Mondrian, under the direction of Brigitte Leal, curator of the exhibition and Assistant Director, Collections, at the Musée National d’Art Moderne, and Jean-Pierre Criqui, Head of Spoken Word at the MNAM and editor of the Cahiers du Musée national d’art moderne. The colloquium will consider the artist’s Paris years, but also different aspects of his work as they extend both before and after this period.
With:
Carel Blotkamp, Free University of Amsterdam
Yve-Alain Bois, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton
Thierry de Duve, Université de Lille 3
Hans Janssen, Gemeentemuseum, The Hague
Guitemie Maldonado, Université de Paris 1
Georges Roque, CNRS, EHESS, Paris
INTERNATIONAL COLLOQUIUM: “DE STIJL, UNE AVANT-GARDE DU XXe SIÈCLE”
FRIDAY 21 JANUARY 2011, 2 PM – 8.30 PM, PETITE SALLE, LEVEL -1
The Bibliothèque Publique d’Information at the Centre Pompidou is organising a colloquium under the title “De Stijl, une avant-garde du XXe siècle.” This event, consisting of a series of presentations and a round-table discussion led by Frédéric Migayrou, Assistant Director of the Musée National d’Art Moderne / Centre de Création Industriel, curator of the De Stijl exhibition, and assistant curator Aurélien Lemonier, will bring together academics, art historians, architects and artists to consider De Stijl’s modernity.
With:
Michael White, Senior Lecturer in the History of Art, University of York
Marek Wieczorek, Associate Professor of Modern Art History, University of Washington
Philippe-Alain Michaud, curator and head of film at the Centre Pompidou
Valérie Guillaume, curator in chief and head of future technology at the Centre Pompidou
Round-table discussion with: Claude Parent, architect; Dominique Perrault, architect;
and Claude Rutault, artist
LA SEMAINE DE STIJL
From 9 to 14 February 2011, in connection with the Mondrian/De Stijl exhibition,
the Dutch Institute in Paris is organizing, in collaboration with the Centre Pompidou,
a series of events entitled “La Semaine De Stijl.”
Among the events are:
PAROLE AU GRAPHISME
FRIDAY 11 FEBRUARY 2011, AT 7PM, PETITE SALLE, LEVEL -1
Entrée libre dans la limite des places disponibles
A discussion of the typography and graphic design of the De Stijl period and its legacy today.
“Graphisme sous influence: l’héritage De Stijl à la Gerrit Rietveld Academie d’Amsterdam.”
CONCERT RED YELLOW + BOOGIE WOOGIE,
WITH THE QUARTET MONDRIAAN, AND GUUS JANSEN
SATURDAY 12 FEBRUARY 2011 AT 8PM, GRANDE SALLE, LEVEL -1
¤14, concessions ¤10
On the programme are Guus Janssen’s Café Society Downtown (2008) and a new work by the same composer, Anton Webern’s Langsamer Satz (1905), an extract from Jacob van Domselaer’s Proeven van stijlkunst (1913-16) (arr. Guus Janssen) and Morton Feldman’s Structures (1951).
SOIRÉE LETTRES MONDRIAN / VAN DOESBURG
MONDAY 14 FEBRUARY 2011 AT 7PM, PETITE SALLE, LEVEL –1
Entrée libre dans la limite des places disponibles
Staged reading of the unpublished letters of Piet Mondrian (1872-1944) and Theo van Doesburg (1883-1931), conserved at the Fondation Custodia in Paris. The reading will be preceded by an opportunity to view these hand-written letters by two key figures of the
De Stijl movement.
Part of the programme of BPI events.
CHRONOLOGY MONDRIAN
7 March 1872 Pieter Cornelis Mondriaan born at Amersfoort.
1892 Moves to Amsterdam, enrols at the academy of Fine Arts.
1897 Becomes a member of the St Luke’s painters’ group, which stages annual exhibitions at the Stedelijk Museum.
Receives his first commissions (traditional portraits, interiors for churches and private clients).
Regularly paints, in Symbolist vein, the landscapes and farms near the family home at Winterswijk.
Already shows an interest in the rhythmic elements of composition (trees and fences) and in flatness (raising the horizon line to counter the effect of depth).
1904-1906 Paints mills, haystacks and views of the River Gein. His painting becomes Expressionist and Fauve, embarking upon a “clarification of the plastic image” (Seuphor).
1908 At Domburg, concentrates on the motifs of church, lighthouse, dunes and sea. The brushwork is sometimes Divisionist (inspired by Jan Toorop) and areas of flat colour are increasingly present. Begins to explore the Theosophy of Helena Blavatsky and the ideas of Rudolf Steiner.
1909 Major Spoor, Mondrian and Sluyters retrospective at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam.
Joins the Netherlands Theosophical Society.
1911 First visit to Paris. Mondrian would have been able to visit the Salon des Indépendants with its Room 41, considered to be the first major collective manifestation of Cubism.
1912 Mondrian moves to Paris. Shows at the 28th Salon des Indépendants, henceforth signing his name Mondrian with a single “a”. Influenced by the Cubists, he paints nudes, still lifes (Still Life with Ginger Pot) and views of Parisian buildings. Adopts Analytical Cubism. The evidence of reality disappears behind the network of geometrical lines and patches of graded monochrome.
1913 His presence at the Salon des Artistes Indépendants is noted by Guillaume Apollinaire, who mentions “Mondrian’s very abstract Cubism” in his report.
1914 Goes back to Holland and is unable to return to Paris on account of the war.
1915-1916 Goes to live in Laren. Meets Theo van Doesburg, Bart van der Leck and the theosophist Schoenmaekers.
The real “beginning of his art”: the subject disappears, paintings consist of simple areas of colour or lines forming “pluses and minuses”.
1917 Publishes a series of articles in the journal De Stijl, which will appear monthly until 1932.
1919 Returns to Paris.
1921 Publication of the pamphlet Le Néo-plasticisme. Principe général de l’équivalence plastique is published by Léonce Rosenberg’s Galerie de l’Effort Moderne. In his earliest Neoplasticist paintings, squares and rectangles of primary colours, or of black, are organised within an asymmetrical grid of black lines. With the flat (“Het Vlak”) he sought to do away with space and volume, going beyond visible nature to arrive at “a purer (cosmic) manner.” The artist was to understand colours intuitively and integrate them into a harmonious composition.
Takes part in the exhibition “Les Maîtres du Cubisme” at Galerie de L’Effort Moderne,” alongside Picasso, Braque, Gris, and Léger amongst others.
Settles at 26, rue du Départ. Very quickly begins to fix painted boards to the walls of the studio, which becomes the abstract concretisation of paintings to come.
1922 Retrospective organised by the Stedelijk Museum to mark the artist’s 50th birthday.
Despite artistic recognition, Mondrian lives in poverty, continuing to do flower paintings that he sells to make a living.
1923 Meets Michel Seuphor. Takes part in the first big De Stijl exhibition in Berlin.
1924 Gives greater emphasis in his paintings to the white background and black lines.
1925 Break with Van Doesburg.
1926 Makes drawings of an abstract interior for Ida Bienert of Dresden.
Maquette of Neoplasticist stage design for Michel Seuphor’s L’Éphémère est Éternel.
André Kertész shoots a series of photographs of Mondrian’s studio.
1927 Mondrian’s work first shown in the US by Katherine Dreier. The article “Le jazz et le néo-plasticisme” proposes a new conception of rhythm.
1930 Contributes to the journal Cercle et Carré and to the group show of the same title.
1931 Joins the Abstraction-Création association. Death of Van Doesburg, to whom he pays tribute in the last number of De Stijl the following year.
1932 Move to the double line, which emerges as a distinct form of construction.
A retrospective at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam marks his 60th birthday.
1934 Attends a Louis Armstrong concert at the Salle Pleyel.
Regularly meets with the young American painter Harry Holtzman, who is visiting Paris.
1935 Exhibition “Cubism and Abstract Art” at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. The catalogue devotes a whole chapter to Mondrian and De Stijl.
1937 Exhibition “Origines et développement de l’art international indépendant” at the Musée du Jeu de Paume, curated by Christian Zervos.
1938 Leaves Paris for London, moving in with Ben Nicholson.
1940 Arrives in New York. Finds accommodation through Harry Holtzman, who introduces him to boogie-woogie.
1941 Shows New York City I, consisting of coloured lines. Also starts using strips of coloured paper.
1 February 1944 Death of Mondrian. His last painting, Victory Boogie-Woogie, remains unfinished. Fritz Glarner and Harry Holtzman shoots a series of photographs and a film of his studio in New York.
1945 “Piet Mondrian” retrospective at MoMA.
1957 Exhibition “Mondrian, l’organisation de l’espace” at Galerie Denise René in Paris.
1969 Most recent French retrospective of Mondrian’s work at the Orangerie des Tuileries, organised by Michel Seuphor.
DE STIJL CHRONOLOGY
1914 Summer: Piet Mondrian moves to Laren, in Holland, the declaration of war making it impossible for him to return to Paris, where he has lived since 1912. Theo van Doesburg is mobilised and sent to the Belgian frontier near Tilburg, where he gets to know poets Evert Rinsema and Antony Kok.
1915 November: Van Doesburg publishes in the journal Eenheid an article on the work of Mondrian, which he has recently discovered.
1916 January-February: Van Doesburg visits Mondrian, who introduces him to the German theosophist Mathieu Hubertus Josephus Schoenmaekers.
March-June: Theo van Doesburg, Eric Wichman and Louis Saalborn establish the artist’s society De Anderen [The Others].
May: Van Doesburg meets architects Jacobus Johannes Pieter Oud and Jan Wils and painter Bart Van der Leck.
Together they establish in Leiden the artists’ society De Sphinx, whose goal is to promote a closer relation between architecture and painting.
This is the beginning of a period of cooperation between the painter and the architects, for whom he produces interior colour schemes and stained-glass windows. His work is close to that of Vilmos Huszár in the same period. Robert van’t Hoff builds the Henny villa at Huis-ter-Heide, whose geometric radicalism wins international recognition. Helene Kröller-Müller acquires recent works by Van der Leck, whose simplified forms and areas of flat primary colour bring it very close to pure abstraction.
1917 Van Doesburg makes his first Neoplastic paintings, called Compositions, based on the use of geometrical grids in accordance with Mondrian’s precepts.
October: Publication of the first issue of the journal De Stijl, whose editor is Van Doesburg. Among the contributors are the painters Mondrian, Van der Leck, Huszár, Gino Severini and Georges Vantongerloo, the poet Kok and architects Oud, Wils, Huib Hoste and Van’t Hoff.
1918 Influenced by De Stijl principles, Gerrit Rietveld develops a first version of the Red-Blue Chair. Van Doesburg conceives the colour scheme for the hotel-restaurant De Dubbele Sleutel, designed by Wils, and for the Bart De Ligt house, designed by Van’t Hoff. He produces stained-glass windows for J.J.P. Oud’s workers’ housing project at Spangen in Rotterdam.
November: Publication of the first manifesto in De Stijl.
1919 The journal is widely distributed in Europe, and includes information on artistic activities abroad.
July: Mondrian leaves for Paris.
1920 February-March: Van Doesburg stays in Paris as Mondrian’s guest. He meets Léonce Rosenberg, director of the Galerie L’Effort Moderne.
April: Theo van Doesburg, Piet Mondrian and Antony Kok sign the second De Stijl manifesto, devoted this time to literature. Piet Zwart collaborates with Jan Wils, designing the colour scheme for the Dansinstituut Gaillard-Jorissen in The Hague and the Bruynzeel Fabrieken in Zaandam.
May: Van Doesburg adopts the pseudonym of I.K. Bonset, Dada poet.
June-November: He organises in the Netherlands the exhibition “La Section d’Or – Paris. Kubisten en Neo-Kubisten.”
18 December 1920 – 3 January 1921: Van Doesburg’s first visit to Germany, taking in Walter Gropius’s Bauhaus in Weimar.
1921 Van Doesburg devotes himself to architectural collaborations. He conceives of colour as the instrument of so radical a dynamization and destructuring of architecture that Oud terminates their relationship and quits De Stijl.
17 March – 28 April : Theo van Doesburg and Nelly van Moorsel travel through Europe. They meet Tristan Tzara.
28 April – late 1921: Van Doesburg moves to Weimar, from where he edits De Stijl. The journal opens its pages to new authors: Hans Richter, Kurt Schwitters, Raoul Hausmann, Clément Pansaers…
May: Van Doesburg’s first philosophical articles published under the pseudonym Aldo Camini.
August: Publication in the journal of the third De Stijl manifesto, “Towards a new World Plasticism.”
1922 Van Doesburg launches the journal Mécano (Leiden, 1922-1923).
8 March-8 July: Van Doesburg offers Bauhaus students a course on De Stijl.
Gets to know the Dutch architect Cornelis van Eesteren, the encounter marking the beginning of a close collaboration.
Van Doesburg is behind the International Congress of Progressive Artists held in Düsseldorf
(29-31 May) and the Constructivist and Dadaist Congress at Weimar (25 September).
1923 January-April: “Dada Tour” of Holland by Nelly van Moorsel, Theo van Doesburg, Kurt Schwitters and Vilmos Huszár.
May: Theo van Doesburg and Nelly van Moorsel move to Paris.
May-October: Huszár and Rietveld submit Composition spatiale et colorée to the Grosse Berliner Kunstausstellung and the Juryfreie Kunstschau in Berlin.
15 October – 15 November: Exhibition “Les Architectes du groupe De Stijl” at the Galerie L’Effort Moderne in Paris. Van Doesburg and Van Eesteren show three projects for houses they call Counter-constructions.
1924 Gerrit Rietveld and Truus Schröder-Schräder build the Schröder House in Utrecht. An architectural manifesto for De Stijl, it wins international recognition. César Domela joins the group.
March-April: “L’architecture et les arts qui s’y rattachent,” a De Stijl exhibition at the École Spéciale d’Architecture, Paris.
In a work entitled Contre-composition, Van Doesburg introduces the diagonal into his painting, calling “Elementarism” this painterly result of his architectural collaboration with Van Eesteren. The break with Mondrian is complete.
In Rotterdam, Oud builds the Café De Unie in accordance with De Stijl principles.
November: The Bulletin de L’Effort Moderne publishes the fifth De Stijl manifesto, “Vers une construction collective,” signed by Van Doesburg and Van Eesteren.
1925 Munich’s Bauhausbücher publishes Van Doesburg’s Grundbegriffe der neuen Gestaltenden Kunst and Mondrian’s Neue Gestaltung, Neoplastizismus, Nieuwe Beelding.
Van Eesteren wins the competition for the redesign of Unter der Linden in Berlin.
June: At the Paris Exhibition, Frederick Kiesler shows City in Space, an application of Neoplasticism to urban design.
The Vicomte de Noailles commissions a mural decoration from Van Doesburg for the “flower room” in the villa built for him at Hyères by Robert Mallet- Stevens.
July: Van Doesburg publishes the “Elementarist Manifesto.”
September: Renovation of the Café de l’Aubette begins in Strasbourg, under Van Doesburg, who is assisted by Hans Arp and Sophie Taueber-Arp. It is completed in 1928.
1927 For the 10th anniversary of De Stijl, Van Doesburg publishes a special number covering the group’s activities over the decade.
1928 June: Rietveld is one of the founder members of the Congrès Internationaux d’Architecture Moderne (Ciam), established on the initiative of Le Corbusier and Sigfried Giedion. With them he signs the “La Sarraz Declaration.”
1929 Van Doesburg builds a house and studio at Meudon
Van Eesteren is appointed head of the Amsterdam urban planning department, working on the extension of the city.
1930 18 April-1 May: The Cercle et Carré group’s exhibition at Galerie 23 in Paris includes works by some 50 artists, among them Vantongerloo and Arp. Mondrian and Michel Seuphor show their joint work, Tableau-poème. In reaction, Van Doesburg launches the journal Art concret, in defence of radical abstraction.
1931 February: The Abstraction-Création group is founded in Paris by Auguste Herbin, Theo van Doesburg and Jean Hélion.
7 March: Van Doesburg dies of a heart attack at Davos in Switzerland, where he had gone for health reasons.
1932 January: A last issue of De Stijl is published, in tribute to Theo van Doesburg.
Source Centre Pompidou Paris
Centre Pompidou Paris
MONDRIAN/DE STIJL
December 1, 2010 – March 21, 2011
fleursdumal.nl magazine
More in: De Stijl, Essays about Van Doesburg, Kok, Mondriaan, Schwitters, Milius & Van Moorsel, Piet Mondriaan
Museum De Pont Tilburg
Tacita Dean
Michael Hamburger
27 november 2010 – 23 januari 2011
Tacita Dean behoort, samen met kunstenaars als Gillian Wearing, Steve McQueen en Sam Taylor-Wood, tot de generatie van jonge Britse film- en videokunstenaars die de laatste jaren aandacht krijgt. De fascinatie voor film is overigens niet tot Engeland beperkt en wordt mede gevoed door de komst van nieuwe, digitale technieken. Door de grote veranderingen die in het medium plaatsvinden worden kunstenaars uitgedaagd om de filmische mogelijkheden en eigenschappen als het ware opnieuw te ontleden. Ook in het werk van Tacita Dean zijn verwijzingen naar de praktijk en de traditie van de film herkenbaar, terwijl zij tegelijkertijd nieuwe narratieve en associatieve mogelijkheden ontwikkelt.
In de collectie van De Pont bevinden zich Der Jungbrunnen (1998) – waarin verschillende elementen (film, fotografie en tekening) in één installatie geïntegreerd zijn – en de korte 16mm film Disappearance at Sea I (1996). Deze film begint met een close-up van de lampen van een vuurtoren. In het ritme van de langzaam ronddraaiende lens en begeleid door een geraas dat kennelijk door het mechanisme wordt veroorzaakt, flitst het verblindende licht over het doek. Na enkele minuten verandert het beeld. Het wordt nu grotendeels in beslag genomen door een avondlijke zee en lucht, waarbij de horizon nog net binnen het bereik van de vuurtoren ligt. Over het panorama glijdt in regelmatige intervallen een zwakke bundel licht. Bijna ongemerkt vermindert het licht, totdat de nacht en een gitzwarte zee het beeld hebben overgenomen. Het geluid van de ronddraaiende lens van de vuurtoren blijft echter de film beheersen, ook wanneer voor het oog niets meer waarneembaar is en de film, zo schreef een criticus, ‘een herinnering van zichzelf wordt, oplost in een duisternis die niet langer die van de film, maar het werkelijke duister in de projectiezaal is.’
Aan de basis van dit werk ligt de poging van Tacita Dean om de gebeurtenissen rond de dood van een zeezeiler te reconstrueren. De feiten dateren uit 1968 en vormen het verwarrende en bizarre verhaal van een man die met achterlating van vrouw en kinderen, als in een wanhopig verlangen om iets groots te verrichten, onervaren en slecht voorbereid, en opgezweept door de plaatselijke middenstand en magistratuur, aan een reis om de wereld begint en verdrinkt. Dean’s film raakt op poëtische wijze aan het gevoel van toenemende eenzaamheid en desoriëntatie dat deze man moet hebben ondervonden, maar is geconcentreerd en gedistantieerd genoeg om een meer algemene betekenis te krijgen.
Kenmerkend voor Tacita Dean is haar aandacht voor de relatie tussen beeld en geluid. In Disappearance at Sea I is het geluid van de vuurtoren een dragend element achter de beelden, waarbij de waarneming van dat geluid ook voor de kijker van realiteit naar verbeelding lijkt te verschuiven. Soms is geluid het directe onderwerp van Dean’s werk. Een werk als Foley Artist (1996) bijvoorbeeld, concentreert zich op het verschijnsel van de ‘soundtrack’ en op het uitstervende ambacht van het kunstmatig produceren van filmgeluid. Het is een complex werk waarin verschillende verhaallijnen door elkaar lopen en waarin je tegelijkertijd twee geluidskunstenaars aan het werk ziet, die de bij de beelden behorende geluiden tot stand brengen. Ze doen dat op basis van een script en met behulp van simpele attributen als stokken, natte kranten en lappen textiel – zaken die, op bijna komische wijze, ver van de ‘realiteit’ van de filmbeelden verwijderd zijn.
Naast films en foto’s maakt Tacita Dean tekeningen, die zij in recente werken in onderlinge samenhang presenteert. Ze zijn met kalk op schoolbord gemaakt en hebben zowel de functie van storyboard als van still, van vastlegging achteraf. In Der Jungbrunnen geeft een schoolbordtekening het verband met Lucas Cranach’s gelijknamige schilderij uit 1546 aan, terwijl de tekening tegelijkertijd de idee van ruimte en beweging voor de film Gellért verkent. Deze film werd opgenomen in het thermale vrouwenbad van Hotel Gellért in Boedapest en vormt onderdeel van de installatie. Cranach’s verwijzing naar de genezende en verjongende kwaliteiten van het water – Der Jungbrunnen laat zich vertalen als ‘bron van eeuwige jeugd’ – krijgt bij Dean een fascinerende parallel in de robuuste beelden van de badende vrouwen. Door de onderlinge samenhang van tekening, foto’s en film binnen de installatie, komt het thema van de tijd op verschillende manieren naar voren: Cranach’s tijd tegenover de huidige tijd, het filmische verloop tegenover het statische en momentele van de fotografie en tenslotte, het tijdloze van de handelingen van het baden zelf.
Toen Tacita Dean opdracht kreeg om een werk te maken in relatie tot de schrijver W. G. Sebald, nam zij diens vriend, de dichter en vertaler Michael Hamburger, als onderwerp. Sebald beschrijft in zijn boek The Rings of Saturn hoe hij Hamburger ontmoet. Haar 28 minuten durende film Michael Hamburger (2007) die De Pont in 2009 aankocht is vooral gericht op Hamburger’s liefde voor appels en op de boomgaard die hij zelf aanlegde bij zijn huis in Suffolk, gebruik makend van appelpitten die hij had gevonden of gekregen. Het grote huis en de omringende wilde tuin, het zonlicht, de huilende wind en het verschijnen van een regenboog dienen als metafoor voor de man als dichter.
“Although Hamburger is said to have despaired of reviews of his poetry which declared that he was ‘better known as a translator,’ we might detect a similar deprecation of his self, by himself, in the film which shares his name. Unwilling, perhaps unable, to talk of his past and his migrations, most especially fleeing Nazism in 1933, he talks poignantly, instead, of his apple trees, of where they have come from, and of their careful cross-breeding. Purity is dismissed, and one senses with an awkward pathos that the poet is translating himself.” Jeremy Millar in ‘Waterlog’, Castle Museum, Norwich.
Museum De Pont Tilburg
Tacita Dean
Michael Hamburger
27 november 2010 – 23 januari 2011
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John Keats
(1795-1821)
The Human Seasons
Four Seasons fill the measure of the year;
There are four seasons in the mind of man:
He has his lusty Spring, when fancy clear
Takes in all beauty with an easy span:
He has his Summer, when luxuriously
Spring’s honied cud of youthful thought he loves
To ruminate, and by such dreaming high
Is nearest unto heaven: quiet coves
His soul has in its Autumn, when his wings
He furleth close; contented so to look
On mists in idleness–to let fair things
Pass by unheeded as a threshold brook.
He has his Winter too of pale misfeature,
Or else he would forego his mortal nature.
Photos: © Hans Hermans 2010
Natuurdagboek December 2010
Poem: John Keats
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kempis.nl poety
A case of identity:
George
jef van kempen 2010
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JOSEPH BEUYS: PARALLEL PROCESSES
until January 16, 2011 – Düsseldorf K20
K20 Grabbeplatz and Schmela Haus
By effecting an inextricable unity of artistic thinking and action, Joseph Beuys (1921-1986) became one of the most charismatic creative personalities of the 20th century. His multifaceted oeuvre – which continues to exert an influence on contemporary artistic production – is still featured and discussed under the most diverse aspects. Through ten major installations and large-scale sculptural works, the exhibition “Joseph Beuys. Parallel Processes” (Sept 11, 2010 – Sept 16, 2011) at the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen am Grabbeplatz in Düsseldorf examines a variety of themes and clarifies Beuys’s “expanded conception of art.” Political and artistic utopias are fused now into “social sculpture” in order to provide new perspectives onto society. During the exhibition, well-known artists will discuss their views of Bueys at the Schmela Haus.
Through his activities, Joseph Beuys expanded our concept of the work of art: he believed in the power of art to change people, and he imagined both social and artistic utopias. Manifesting itself progressively has been his worldwide influence, one that remains detectable even in the most recent art production. Among the altogether circa 300 works on view at the Kunstsammlung am Grabbeplatz and at the Schmela Haus are masterworks such as “zeige deine Wunde (Show your Wound)”; 1974/75), “The pack (das Rudel)” (1969), and “Fond IV/4″(1970/71).
A number of installations, on loan from major museums and private collections, are leaving their permanent locations for the Düsseldorf exhibition the first time since the death of the artist. Shown in Europe now for the first time is the large-scale installation “Stripes from the house of the shaman 1964-72” (1980). Also featured is a comprehensive selection of drawings, objects, plastic images, and relics from Beuys’s actions, all of which establish interrelationships between art and life in singular ways.
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Coming together in “Parallel Processes” are sculptural and pictorial aspects, theoretical reflections, and art actions, along with this artist’s idiosyncratic transformations of working materials and objects, to form an extraordinary portrait of Joseph Beuys’s unique lifework. Invested with a new contemporaneity and urgency are both the sculptural qualities of his art and its performative potential. Experienced with great immediacy throughout nearly 3000 ft.² of exhibition space is the complex network structure which joins Beuys’s artistic oeuvre into a coherent totality.
A comprehensive catalog (ca. 432 pages) with color illustrations of all exhibited works guides the reader through the presentation’s various “parallel processes.” There are essays by Marion Ackermann, Gottfried Boehm, Wilfried Kuehn, Isabelle Malz, Maja Naef, and Johannes Stüttgen. Sharing her views in an interview is internationally recognized action artist Marina Abramovi?. In addition, a special city map identifies the locations in Düsseldorf which were invested with a special significance during the life of this professor at the local art academy. Guided tours to these sites will also be available.
This exhibition forms part of the program of the Quadriennale 2010, organized by the regional capital of Düsseldorf. A scholarly collaboration between the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen and Friedrich-Schiller Universität in Jena has received substantial support from the Federal Ministry for Education and Research (BMBF). Under preparation since 2009 by a team of young researchers and commencing this coming January is a symposium on Beuys. The setting will be the former Galerie Schmela, recently acquired by the Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia – a venue where Joseph Beuys made art history with his exhibitions and actions during the 1970s and 1980s. The program draws upon the participants’ catalog texts on the individual works and on the thematic areas which preoccupied Bueys. Exploring a range of possibilities for presenting Beuys’s works during the run-up to the exhibition was the successful lecture series BEUYS AUSSTELLEN? (Exhibiting Beuys?; Nov 12, 2009 – June 24, 2010), organized by the Kunstsammlung and developed in collaboration with Prof. Wilfried Kuehn and the Hochschule für Gestaltung in Karlsruhe.
Exhibition curators: Marion Ackermann, Isabelle Malz
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More in: Exhibition Archive, Galerie Deutschland, Sculpture, ZERO art
Poets’ Portrait: Sara Bidaoui
Kinderstadsdichter Tilburg 2009-2011
Foto © Harrie Janssens
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Poëzie en de kunst van het weglaten
jef van kempen ©2010
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Camera obscura: Fools
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Hypnotize with any T.V.set
1st. evening or money – back
Visual poetry: Ready-mades – kempis.nl poetry magazine
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George Meredith
(1828 – 1909)
Winter Heavens
Sharp is the night, but stars with frost alive
Leap off the rim of earth across the dome.
It is a night to make the heavens our home
More than the nest whereto apace we strive.
Lengths down our road each fir-tree seems a hive,
In swarms outrushing from the golden comb.
They waken waves of thoughts that burst to foam:
The living throb in me, the dead revive.
Yon mantle clothes us: there, past mortal breath,
Life glistens on the river of the death.
It folds us, flesh and dust; and have we knelt,
Or never knelt, or eyed as kine the springs
Of radiance, the radiance enrings:
And this is the soul’s haven to have felt.
Photos: Hans Hermans 2010 – Natuurdagboek November 2010
Poem: George Meredith
kempis.nl poetry magazine
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Camera obscura: Princess Tiny
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