December 19, 2007
Official designer of the Fête de la musique 2008 here in the Netherlands, France’s Geneviève Gauckler will be exhibiting in Eindhoven at the MU from 25 January through 5 March 2008. Currently one of France’s leading graphic designers, Gauckler mixes craziness, food and nice monsters. The exhibit is called Food Chain and is Gauckler’s first solo exhibition in the Netherlands.
For more information in Dutch: mu.nl
(Link: Kreukreuscopie)
Tags: Eindhoven, Geneviève Gauckler, graphic designer, MU
December 10, 2007
Let’s help save our church and raise money posing naked! Sounds just like the plotline for Calendar Girls. And it is. Thirty women posed naked to raise money for the restoration of their church in the coastal village of Wijk aan Zee, North Holland. The youngest participant is 40 and the oldest is 78.
The bricks of the 500-year old church are slowly eroding due to sand, sea and wind because the bricks are of poor quality. The naughty calendar shoud raise some money to pay for the restauration. However, the church 25,000 euro. The women were photographed in and around the church, naked and with angel wings. And it’s all Photoshop-free.
The calendars will be sold during the Christmas market for 12,50 euro a pop. Only 250 were printed. If my math is correct, this means a mere 3,125 euro if they sell out. I gave up on dividing 30 by 12.
Tags: Christmas market, naked calendar, North Holland, Wijk aan Zee
December 6, 2007
The controversial statue ‘Santa Claus’ by American artist Paul McCarthy (someone feel free to clean up the Wikipedia article) will most probably be placed on the Binnenwegplein in Rotterdam, near the Boijmans Van Beuningen museum.
The meter-high statue got people talking about it two years ago because the Santa Claus (Father Christmas) has a big Christmas tree that looks like a sex toy, commonly known as a buttplug. The city bought the statue for almost EUR 300,000 in 2001, but couldn’t find a suitable place for it.
Funny enough, in 2003 the Tate Modern in Britain had no qualms about Paul McCarthy’s work, neither did the city of Antwerp, but Dutch politicians did. Even the huge 24-meter Santa Claus installed outdoors in a park in Antwerp was entitled “Santa Claus with a Buttplug”.
I thought you weren’t supposed to buy things if you didn’t know what to do with them, especially with tax payers’ money.
(Link: De Pers)
Tags: buttplug, Christmas tree, Rotterdam, Santa Claus
December 4, 2007
Comedian/singer Martine Bijl decided to clean house last summer and chose to get rid of the remains of an abandoned hobby: many antique picture books she had collected over the years. She contacted Amsterdam auction house De Eland, who promised to take care of everything. Wondering what had happened to the cheque, she contacted the house after a couple of months only to find out that she wouldn’t get any money. The auction house had decided to throw away the 13 boxes of books after a cursory glance in some of them had revealed that they were not worth anything.
According to the print version of newspaper Het Parool, some of the books had an estimated value of hundreds of euro each. By British artist Arthur Rackham (1867-1939), Bijl owned De Ring van de Neveling (1911, 1912; text by Wagner/Kloos), Britsche Balladen (Verwey), and Midzomernachtsdroom (Shakespeare, Burgersdijk). By French artists J.J. Granville (1803-1847) Bijl owned the rare Scènes de la vie privée et publique des animaux (1853). It’s the auction’s house standard policy to throw away any lot that it expects will not net more than 25 euro, which a box of regular books rarely would.
Tags: antique, auction, martine bijl, picture book, shakespeare, wagner
November 27, 2007
Joshua Pennings is an artist from Grave, Noord-Brabant who makes animal sculptures from rusty, discarded tools and parts. The size of these works ranges from a couple cubic decimeters to a couple cubic meters.
Tags: art out of garbage, grave, metal, Noord-Brabant, rust
Anyone who reads the book PIG 05049 by Rotterdam designer Christien Meindertsma gets to read all about the things made using pigs. Matches, lotions, desserts, beer, lemonade, car paint, pills, bread, sweets and even green energy should be entirely avoided by any real vegetarian or vegan and anyone whose religious beliefs has an issue with piggies. Chances are, they barely know any of this, as PIG 05049 has discovered 187 uses for pigs in quite unusual places. I’m sure I’ve seen a vegetarian use a match or a Jew drive a car…
PIG 05049 will be on sale as of December, and in the summer of 2008, Meindertsma will have a warehouse full of pig products in the Rotterdam Kunsthal during an exhibition called ‘Kunsthal Kookt’ (‘The Kunsthal is cooking’).
(Link: vleesmagazine.nl)
November 15, 2007
In Delft, South Holland, people can call a free mobile phone number and potted geraniums somewhere downtown will change colour. Artist Leonard van Munster has placed 10 bunches of potted geraniums at the request of the Technical University of Delft. Van Munster is known to combine his art with the technical possibilities of the mobile phone. Delft’s public library has an ape orchestra by Van Munster. Visitors can call the apes at at free mobile number upon which the orchestra plays a fragment by classical composer Francisco Tárrega from the 19th century, whose music is now known around the world as the Nokia tune.
(Link and photo: ad.nl)
Tags: Delft, flowers, geraniums, Leonard van Munster
October 8, 2007
On 10 October, musician, rock singer and photographer Lou Reed will open his photo exhibition entitled “Lou Reed’s New York” in Amsterdam at gallery Serieuze Zaken Studioos. The exhibition will be open to the public from 11 October through 15 November.
Why were all the photos from New York in this exhibition? “I think Leonard Cohen had a line, `I would travel anywhere in the pursuit of beauty’. And this is the beauty of New York. I just wanted to take pictures of that, with no other motive than that.”
Galerie Serieuze Zaken, Bilderdijkstraat 66 in Amsterdam. Opening hours: Wednesday through Saturday from noon to 6 pm and the first Sunday of the month from noon to 5 pm.
(Link: Persberichten.nl, photo: loureed.nl)
Tags: Amsterdam, Lou Reed, New York, photo exhibition
September 27, 2007
Robodock is an arts and technology festival that was held last weekend at the NDSM wharf in Amsterdam. MAKE magazine (an American magazine on DIY technology) has posted a short clip with impressions on the web. This year was the 10th Robodock festival, and its theme was Rhythm, Time and Transformation.
Photo: screen capture of the MAKE film displaying human powered carnival rides from Belgian group Time Circus.
Other items on display were a small train pulling a bar, a robot drummer, another train that brought its own track along (undoubtedly taking a cue from a Cocco Bill story), power tool drag races and more.
September 24, 2007
Photos of defaced Catholic icons are on display at the Stedelijk Museum (Municipal Museum) in Amsterdam until November 11. They cover the time of the Protestant Reformation in Europe during the 16th century, when part of taking back the church by the people consisted of doing away with what the people considered false doctrines and malpractices, as Wikipedia calls it.
The exhibit by Gert Jan Kocken explores the choices people made in their haste of getting rid of false icons. For instance, in a painting called Gregorsmesse, which shows local dignitaries together with Jesus Christ, the faces of everyone except that of Jesus have been defaced, suggesting that either the new protestants were still a bit afraid to damage the portrait of their most important hero, or that the reformation was as much a protest against church hierarchy as it was against church malpractices.
The iconoclastic purges of the Reformation (the Beeldenstorm, attack on images) were an important step towards the revolution and ultimately independence of the Netherlands, because the Catholic Spanish ruler tried to stamp out such practices.
(Via Sudsandsoda (Dutch).)
Tags: Amsterdam, Catholic icons, Protestant Reformation, Stedelijk Museum
