February 24, 2008

Paul Faassen: colouring outside the lines

Filed under: Art,Design,Photography by Branko Collin @ 1:59 pm

Paul Faassen is a cartoonist who juxtaposes techniques to make a point. I came across his work yesterday when I was reading an article in the online Volkskrant when something in the accompagnying cartoon (no longer available) drew my eye. It took a second but then I realized what it was: the faces of the two men men in the image were drawn fairly realisticly, but the rest of their bodies was sort of sketched in. The drawing reminded me most of connect-the-dot type drawings, where some details are already filled in. But instead of dots there had been empty space, which the child-like artist had filled in.

The rest of his cartoons are like that too. The artist has used the connect the dots idea before, though in reverse: a fully naked man is looking down at his erect … well, what is? Connect the dots and find out (NSFW?). From a photo taken at a beach of a father carrying his son, the father has been erased; the subtitle suggests that the father was a Jew. (“Daddy, am I also one of the chosen ones?” the son asks.) And then he takes it even a step further, and uses an immediately recognisable stereotype of the emancipation of graphic design: a man at cocktail party has had facial surgery, but things didn’t come out quite right; the face is all stretched out. Faassen obviously achieved the effect by using the stretch tool in Photoshop. Says the man in the cartoon: “Did it myself! On the computer!”

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February 12, 2008

Fake-3D cartoon mural

Filed under: Art by Branko Collin @ 9:00 am

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This trompe-l’œil mural is by Daan Botlek, presumably from his most recent “Uitgewanden” (Outards) series, in which the artist sculpts “bodies and body parts into images which are metaphorical and/or absurd,” though the Trendbeheer blog doesn’t say.

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January 26, 2008

Dozens of hamsters freed from plastic balls

Filed under: Animals,Art by Branko Collin @ 3:12 pm

Last Thursday the Society for the Protection of Animals raided an Amsterdam art gallery in co-operation with the local police to free dozens of hamsters. The animals were part of an exhibition by artist Tinkebell (pseudonym of Katinka Simonse) called Empathy. In the exhibition hamsters were locked up in plastic, see-through play-balls, set in a recreated living room. With the exhibition Tinkebell wants to expose the “ambiguous morality of animal rights and environmental activists” by using the “often naïve ideas that people—activists—have about the concept of freedom in the animal world.” The balls she uses (so called “run-about balls”) are popular with pet owners, who use them to let their pets roam relatively free through the house “without the worry of escape or injury,” as one merchant calls it.

The artist is in the dark about the why of the raid. “Nobody told me anything,” she told Amsterdam TV channel AT5. According to AT5, Tinkebell and the galery owner will be questioned by the police next week.

Tinkebell caused an earlier uproar when she killed her three year old cat to turn it into a handbag. In the TV program De Wereld Draait Door she suggested that it was a mercy killing, claiming the cat was depressed.

Via Fok (Dutch). Source image: Empathy.

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January 25, 2008

New francophone event portal in the Netherlands

Filed under: Art,Design,Film,Food & Drink,General,Music by Orangemaster @ 10:28 am

Francomondo is a new, English-language and occasionally Dutch-language weblog about anything francophone happening in the Netherlands. Their world is made up of francophones from around the world living in the Netherlands and Dutch people interested in francophone culture and la francophonie. It is for anyone who wants to know more about French-language events.

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The folks at 24oranges worked on this site and so that’s why we’re proudly plugging it (not shamelessly!).

UPDATE: We pulled the plug a while back, it was just too much work.

(Link: Francomondo)

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January 17, 2008

Golden age collections showcased in Wonder Stage of Nature

Filed under: Art,History by Branko Collin @ 9:00 am

No Dutch Golden Age (17th century) collection of obscure and exotic trinkets and specimens appears to have survived, as heirs tended to sell off these collections to foreign collectors. However, we still have books that illustrate them at least. As Bibliodyssey writes:

The collection obsession of Early Modern Europe, that saw people stocking cabinets of curiosities […] with obscure and exotic trinkets and specimens from the worlds of ‘artificialia’ and ‘naturalia’, emerged in Holland under a local profile of influences.

Unlike most of their European counterparts, the Dutch republic lacked both a royal court or any sizeable aristocracy, so collecting was a hobby cultivated by regular citizens. […]

[There were numerous collections] built up by Dutch carpenters, merchants, tradesmen and artisans. The enthusiasm for collecting, in Holland at least, could be seen at all levels of society, but with the most notable collections owned by burghers and regents, in contrast to the kings, nobles and prelates of other European countries. And there is the rub. It was customary for families to sell off these ‘rariteitenkabinets’ and divide the spoils following the death of the collector. Accordingly, most Dutch collections of significance left the country, purchased by foreign nobility and no intact collections have survived; adding an interesting element of documentary detective work to scholarly assessments.

But at least a documentation of these collections has survived. The wonderful Bibliodyssey for instance liberally quotes a picture book by Levinus Vincent (1658-1727) called “Wondertooneel der Nature” (Wonder Stage of Nature).

Via BoingBoing.

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January 7, 2008

All cute things come to an end

Filed under: Art by Orangemaster @ 11:02 am
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What was once a big blow-up bath duck floating around near Station RAI in Amsterdam is no more. The duckie, made by Rotterdam artist Florentijn Hofman, was supposed to stay until the end of March to liven up the ‘Zuidas’ (South axis) of Amsterdam, a part of town with skyscrapers and businesspeople. Hofman had not told the general public about the duck, but it was photographed by Louis Hofman (no relation). We know it’s Hofman’s because he had a HUGE one last summer in St-Nazaire, France.

To quote the artist, “the bath duck is soft, friendly and for young and old.” Was.

(Links and photo: AT5, nieuwsuitamsterdam)

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December 27, 2007

Zone 5300, winter 2007

Filed under: Art,Comics by Branko Collin @ 9:00 am

Once again the macabre is represented in the fourth and last issue of Zone 5300 this year. Death and decay play important roles in respectively a Molluskhead story by Fufu Frauenwahl and in Floor de Goede’s Deathboy.

[illustration] Simon Spruyt reminisces about the time when he took little Lizzy for a tour of his comics plant (illustration). In doing so he gives the reader rare insights in the cold, hard economic realities of making and selling comics. No, it’s not what you think it is. No, not that either. Yes, you’re warmer with zombies, but you’ll have to read the story yourself to find out.

[photo] New physical media give publishers an enormous opportunity to sell to you what you already own: DAT tapes to replace your LPs, CDs to replace your DATs, and so on ad infinitum. But what happens to the discarded carriers? Rotterdammer Matrijs van Merg takes care of them. He builds organs from diskettes, videotapes from LPs, and more, and Zone 5300 interviews him. Photo: race track made from LPs.

Another article is the long interview with 1970s underground comics icon Paul Bodoni, whose albums have such imaginative titles as The Story of the Story and Other Stories, and Two Alfredos on a Green Coyote.

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December 24, 2007

Photographer Jan-Dirk van der Burg captures the mundane

Filed under: Art,Photography by Branko Collin @ 8:10 pm

Photographer Jan-Dirk van der Burg (Flash) tries to capture the out-of-the-way, the old-fashioned and the corny. Like a Dutch Paul Shambroom he visits backrooms to document commission meetings, office culture, hobbies and small passions.

His photos appear in the weekend magazine of Amsterdam daily Het Parool in a column in which young reporters Alma & Fanny ‘collect collectors’. This photo for instance is of a man who collects toy guns, a hobby that, as the collector mentioned matter-of-factly, greatly increases the time he spends at airports, as he always gets picked out of the line by customs.

According to an interview on his website, Van der Burg started to try and capture the rift between people and their environment after he had visited modern office buildings that were furnished like playgrounds yet where employees were unhappy. In order to keep the interior design unblemished, people weren’t even allowed to put up their own pictures.

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December 23, 2007

Big long blue line of water

Filed under: Art by Orangemaster @ 8:00 am
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A 1 km art “installation” by artist Henk Hofstra, located in Drachten, The Netherlands. The road, which should be seen via Google Maps (Earth) soon, has the big text “WATER IS LIFE” written on it, and used 4,000 litres of paint.

(Link and Photo: haha.nu)

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December 20, 2007

“Dead bus shelter” promotes funeral museum

Filed under: Art,Dutch first by Orangemaster @ 11:12 am
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A “dead bus shelter” has been buried on Amsterdam’s Museumplein (Museum square) to draw attention to the new Dutch Funeral Museum, which “due to circumstances” opens today. Although there’s frost on the ground today, the advertising people had time to bury something yesterday without damaging the grass permanently (the main reason why events aren’t held there any more).

The sign reads “for now”.

(Link and photo: reclamewereld.blog.nl)

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