January 12, 2010

Artists sneak in and hang their works up in museums

Filed under: Art,Weird by Orangemaster @ 1:20 pm
Bonnefantenmuseum

Last night, a group of young artists hung up their own works of art in three major Dutch museum, the Groninger Museum in Groningen, the Bonnefanten Museum in Maastricht and Museum de Fundatie in Zwolle. This act of protest was meant to draw attention to the fact that not just established artists should be in museums, but young, up and coming artists as well.

This morning the Bonnefanten Museum (shown here) said that they found a large black-and-white photo in the old art wing, while de Fundatie found a small colour painting among its collection. Both museums were closed at the time and neither of them has any idea how the art got there. Employees of the Groninger Museum saw a big object in their security cameras and when they went to check it out, the big object had disappeared. Spooky.

So besides this stunt making the news and all, it also tells me how useless the security actually is at all three museums.

(Link: depers.nl, Photo of Bonnefanten Museum in Maastricht by Peter Zoon, some rights reserved)

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January 6, 2010

Blow-up doll art meets sports

Filed under: Art,Sports by Orangemaster @ 11:30 am
sportjasbal 01

This artwork called ‘Sports jacket ball’ was made by Dutch artist Sander Reijgers. His work caught my attention because it uses sports fabrics as well as actual blow-up dolls. This football with a black blow-up doll is appropriately called ‘Black Woman’ and yes, I dare speculate it’s a nodd to the 2010 World Cup football in South Africa.

(Link: trendbeheer.com)

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January 4, 2010

Naked assassinated politican for sale on ebay

Filed under: Art,History,Photography by Orangemaster @ 12:28 pm
Picture 1

This photograph taken in 1977 of murdered, controversial gay politician Pim Fortuyn is up for grabs on ebay, bidding starts at EUR 495. If we can trust the description, it was ordered by Fortuyn, was never published and is authentic, on proper paper and all that jazz.

Pim Fortuyn, leader and founder of the LPF (Pim Fortuyn List, a party named after him) was murdered at the Hilversum mediapark (where all our radio and telly is located) by Volkert van der Graaf, a Caucasian male (that has to be said) who was upset at Fortuyn’s harshness towards Muslims.

(Link: parool.nl, Photo: Ebay)

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December 24, 2009

Manually operated clock in Rotterdam

Filed under: Art,Gadgets by Branko Collin @ 8:49 am

A team of nine people was necessary to run this wooden clock on November 27 for twenty-four hours in Rotterdam, at the place where the central railway station used to be.

Every minute the foreman called out the time, and his helpers then deconstructed and reconstructed the required digits. The clock was designed by Mark Formanek and produced by Mothership. Other volunteers filmed the complete running of the clock, the result being another clock.

(Video: Mothership. Link: Switched)

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December 22, 2009

‘Not being normal is disturbing to others’

Filed under: Art,General,Weird by Orangemaster @ 11:54 am
redsquare

The recently opened exhibition Niet Normaal (‘Not Normal’) Difference on Display features 80 works by major international artists who question normality, held in the famous Beurs van Berlage building downtown Amsterdam.

In an attempt to talk about something else than snow and trains, I failed with the latter. The NS (Dutch railways) has banned a poster picturing a nude sculpture by British artist Marc Quinn of a disabled athlete missing one upper arm and lower leg because they apparently feel that it is too confrontational and unfit for the public at large. What about all the horrible (by horrible, I mean just badly done) sexist, sexy, racist, boring, stupid and ugly posters? If those are normal, them I’m a proud freak in my own sane way.

So bravo ‘normal people’ of the Dutch railways, you’ve managed to tell the entire country that disabled people are not normal as well as being ‘offensive’ to look at even in picture form. Splendid marketing coup for the exhibition I guess.

(Link: nrc.nl, Photo of Mosaic by pink_fish13, some rights reserved)

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December 12, 2009

Lost Leyster discovered

Filed under: Art,History by Branko Collin @ 8:31 am

The Frans Hals Museum recently discovered this lost painting by Judith Leyster (1609-1660), the first female Dutch master painter.

The painting depicts a still life of a Chinese vase with flowers. Its Belgian owner, Mrs Luc from Ostend, alerted the museum in August of its existence. Although she was aware art collectors knew about the painting (it is listed in an inventory in Leyster’s husband’s possessions), she was waiting for the right moment to reveal the work, which she originally bought for about 500 euro in the 1970s.

Leyster became a master painter in 1633, the first woman in the West to do so. Her paintings seem inspired by Frans Hals, showing jolly drinkers, musicians and playing children. Both Leyster and Hals had their studios in Haarlem. After Leyster married fellow painter Jan Miense Molenaer in 1636, her output dwindled to a trickle, her last known painting being from 1643 until a few months ago.

The Frans Hals Museum quotes Leyster expert Frima Fox Hofrichter:

Many art historians have often assumed that Judith Leyster gave up painting upon her marriage. With the discovery of the flower still life and its date of 1654, we now have documentation that she continued her career as a painter. It is likely that Leyster moved to still-lives and botanical studies after her marriage, perhaps to split the market with her husband.

The Frans Hals Museum will host a Leyster exhibition from 19 December 2009 till May 9, 2010.

(Link: Parool. Source image: Frans Hals Museum.)

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December 10, 2009

Low Countries map in shape of a lion

Filed under: Art by Branko Collin @ 9:02 am

Strangemaps talks a bit about this popular 16th century depiction of the Netherlands and Belgium as a lion, known as the Leo Belgicus:

The Leo Belgicus is a lion transposed on a map of the area, its ferocity symbolizing the belligerence of a nation fighting for its life. […] In the 16th century, that general area was also known as the Seventeen Provinces, first under Burgundian and later Spanish tutelage. As the plural description suggests, these provinces were a loose confederation with little or no unifyingly ‘national’ sentiment.

That changed when religious upheavals pitted the increasingly protestant and independent-minded locals against their staunchly catholic Spanish overlords. The old Roman toponym Belgica was used to provide the entire Low Countries with a single geographic denominator.

The Austrian cartographer baron Michael Aitzinger, probably inspired by the prevalence of lions in the coats of arms of many of the Seventeen Provinces, drew the first Leo Belgicus in 1583, fifteen years into the Eighty Years’ War of the Spanish in the Netherlands. The long war soon became a stalemate, with neither party able to achieve total victory.

I remember the story being told slightly differently in history class, with emphasis being laid on Charles V being a good egg, on account of him being a local boy (born in Ghent), but his son Philip being a degenerate Spaniard with whom we wanted to have nothing to do.

(Link tip: Clogwog.)

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December 9, 2009

Rembrandt rings up record price

Filed under: Art,Dutch first by Orangemaster @ 11:12 am

A painting entitled ‘Portrait of a man, half-length, with his arms akimbo’ by Rembrandt, which has not been seen in public for nearly 40 years sold at Christie’s auction house in London for a record € 22.3 mln on Tuesday 9 December according to our Dutch source, while other sources, including British paper The Guardian quotes it at € 20.2 mln. Either way, it’s a record. “It was painted during one of Rembrandt’s most artistically inventive periods, and is believed to be one of only two of the artist’s paintings from 1658 in existence.” It was also sold when he went bankrupt.

(Links: dutchnews.nl, www.guardian.co.uk)

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November 24, 2009

A canal of whores at the London Gallery

Filed under: Art by Orangemaster @ 6:16 pm

The Hoerengracht (literally ‘whore canal’) is the clever name of an exhibition by Americans Ed and Nancy Kienholz currently at the National Gallery in London featuring ‘an artistic re-creation of Amsterdam’s red light district’.

Althought the play on words is excellent, this sentence, however, is rubbish: “The Herengracht, or Gentlemen’s Canal, is home to Amsterdam’s prostitutes, who famously sit in windows to ply their trade.”

The Herengracht has beautiful houses, lawyers, offices, a few nice restaurants, but no whores. The nearest girls are on the Spui, roughly two streets down. So much for fact checking.

Someone on television said this exhibition would come to Amsterdam, and I wonder why anyone would bother looking at some artsy-farty rendering of the real thing when we can go, see and even experience the real thing. I could be missing the point, who knows.

(Link: independent.co.uk, Photo is Red Light District of The Hague)

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November 17, 2009

Antique show lands most expensive item ever

Filed under: Art,Dutch first by Orangemaster @ 3:58 pm
Dragonfly1

The Dutch version of British television series Antique Roadshow called Tussen Kunst & Kitsch (‘Between Art & Kitsch’) has landed the most expensive item ever in its 25 year history. The ‘spectacular discovery’ is a brooch by Frenchman René Lalique, which has apparently never been seen publicly (seen here is Dragonfly by René Lalique, as he was also a glass maker) and is said to be worth EUR 100,000. The owner, a woman, has already sold it. The show will air on Wednesday 18 November.

The brooch ended up in her family by way of Saint Petersburg, Russia, as her grandfather fled during the revolution and brought it with him to the Netherlands.

(Link: mediacourant.nl, Photo of Dragonfly by Chris73, some rights reserved.)

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