Tag: Art
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Through the looking glass
Up close: Light-rimmed, dark faces, all similar, each one different. Made by the artist out of paper pulp, rice paper, acrylic and art powder colour. With their wide open mouths they look startled, scared; but – according to the Exhibition Guide – they are initiates singing at their first holy communion. Two steps back: From…
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I am eyeye
I like eyeye. It is one of the words coined by Aram Saroyan that were written on walls at the Kochi Biennale. One eye overlapping a second eye, like in the vision through our own pair of eyes which enables us to see the world. I like lighght. To see, we need light in our…
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Global dust
One of the attractions for me to revisit Kerala after many, many years, was the international modern art biennale in Kochi of which the second edition took place in 2014/15. Another attraction was the International Film Festival of Kerala which, in 2014, was organized already for the 19th time in the State capital. My good old…
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3 x Venus
La femme, toujours la femme. Constant source of inspiration for the arts. 1. A ceramic Venus turning rounds in an ‘attractively’ lit up, enclosed space. A red-light-district Venus? 2. A huge wooden Venus on the landing. Unpolished, roughly cut, she impresses me as a strong piece of nature. A Nordic Venus. I like her. 3.…
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The GEM of Berlage
Having lived in Amsterdam for nearly half a century, the name Berlage has become very familiar to me, as have the remarkable buildings he designed for this city a century ago and which are now protected monuments often carrying his name. Like the ‘Beurs van Berlage’ (the commodity exchange) and the ‘Berlagebrug’ (bridge of Berlage).…
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The LeWitt-Berlage Stairwell
With the renovation of the Gemeentemuseum in 1998 the drawing of LeWitt that had been on the walls of the stairwell since 1983 had disappeared. LeWitt must have designed hundreds of wall drawings during his lifetime. I only know a few, but drawing # 373 on the stairwell in the Gemeentemuseum was considered an outstanding example since it…
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Rothko and LeWitt at a glance
Right: a person looking attentively at one of Rothko’s last paintings (Untitled, 1969, acrylic on canvas) made shortly before he took his own life in 1970. Black above gray. Middle: an open glass door. We leave the Rothko exhibition, and partly through, partly reflected in the glass of the door we see the broad lines…
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Rothko vs Mondriaan
The painting (Untitled, 1970) in this photograph must be one of Rothko’s last, if not the last. In February of the same year he took his life. For over 20 years he had worked in his typical style: combinations of horizontal blocks of colour, one above the other. Some of his paintings are of great, intense beauty;…
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Rothko
It was during my visit to the Rothko exhibition in The Hague last year that I was reminded of the frescoes by Fra Angelico in the monks’ cells of the convent of S. Marco in Florence (see last week’s post). Rothko had seen them too and had been equally impressed by them. One enters an empty…
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Convent of S. Marco, Cell 39
Around 1440 the artist and Dominican friar Fra Angelico, aided by his pupils and assistants, painted 45 frescoes in the cells and corridors of the Convent of S. Marco in Florence. In the Encyclopaedia of the Italian Renaissance (Thames and Hudson 1981) we read about him: “He is one of those rarities among artists, monastic…
καιρός remembered 