Jurassic Art! - 10 times art with dinosaurs

Twenty-two years after Jurassic Park the fourth instalment of the well-known dinosaur films enters Dutch cinemas on Thursday 11 June. In Jurassic World we see in 3D how the dreamed theme park with live dinosaurs is finally realised, and how things go grandly wrong when overambitious showmen start genetically manipulating dinosaurs. In each new volume, the plot is thinner, the special effects become more dominant and the scientific pretensions less so, but no one can deny that the Jurassic Park-films have revolutionised. Also in the arts.

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With the story of Michael Crichton (scientist clones dinosaurs from blood in a fossilised mosquito, dinosaurs break loose and go man-hunting), Spielberg filmed the boyhood dream of millions. Since then, every natural history museum has been talking about Velociraptor and T-Rex (which used to be simply called Tyrannosaurus in the Netherlands) and the Jurassic is by far the most popular geological era. Of course, the arts worldwide have also drawn inspiration from the films, their rationale and fascinating technology. An anthology.

1. Dinotopia

The film industry's theme and technique of Jurassic Park embraced. Famous are the British documentaries 'Walking with Dinosaurs', in which prehistoric animals (from the Mesozoic, not the Jurassic!) are portrayed scientifically for once, but real fiction is seen in TV series Dinotopia, where humans and dinosaurs live together in a hidden world. Based on the brilliant picture book by James Gurney.

2. Momix: Botanica

A dancing triceratops skeleton is seen in 'Botanica' by MOMIX. Dance merges with illusionism in this company by Moses Pendleton. Botanica describes the changes in nature, from the opening of a flower to aspects of evolution. (Image above this article, photo Max Pucciariello)

3. Darwin the Dinosaur

To make dance accessible to children, turn dancers into... right. Darwin the Dinosaur is a dance performance with fluorescent light, making dinosaurs appear to move across the stage like luminous game characters.

4. Sui Jianguo's Red Dinosaurs

The Chinese sculptor Sui Jianguo also has a thing for dinosaurs. This one with 'Made in China' clearly readable on it stood on The Hague's Lange Voorhout in 2011. For Jianguo, the extinct giants symbolise the super-fast growth of Chinese exports, which are largely based on cheap imitation products and, in Jianguo's view, are not only good for people.

5. Panamarenko's Archaeopterix

Closer to home: Flemish sculptor Panamarenko is fascinated by everything that flies. Back in 1990, he fiddled with his Archaeopteryx, a prehistoric bird, out of iron, tape, motors and solar panels. Before Jurassic Park, so he doesn't actually count. The animal is at the Middelheim Museum in Antwerp.

6. By raptor bike through the Bible Belt

Markus Moestue (Norway) cycled 300 kilometres through what is called the Norwegian Bible Belt on a home-made raptor bike. In doing so, he protested against dogmatic religious education in Norwegian state schools.

7. In the hall of...

Musically, the flush is rather thin in dinoland. Dinosaur Annex from Boston has been playing modern-classical music in Boston since 1975, but otherwise has no link to dinosaurs at all. A funny composition is The Hall of the Dinosaur King by composer and pianist Lionel Yu, although I hear more gothic than classical in it and although it is a pity that there is only a canned midi version available.

8. Jurassic 5

In pop music, the dino climate seems a little better. Long before Jurassic Park there were Dinosaur Jr. and Marc Bolan's T-Rex, but really only the hip-hoppers of Jurassic 5 in their name directly to the film, with their name mainly indicating their 'old skool' hip-hop style.

9. Jasper Hagenaar

Utrecht artist Jasper Hagenaar regularly painted experimental set-ups and dioramas, in which dinosaurs played a role, in 2011 and 2012. As broken object, or in a showcase with people there. Its Dinotopia At least looks very different from Gurney's!

10. Simon Stålenhag's 'Paleo'

For those who want to enjoy magnificent dinosaur herds and lonely primordial turtles apart from social intentions and conceptual double-bottoms, there is the work of Simon Stålenhag (Sweden). For the exhibition 'Fossils and evolution' at the Stockholm Museum of Natural History, he painted an extensive series of landscapes.