Sometimes I think I was born in the wrong time. Wouldn't it be wonderful to live in the period when modern art was born? Then I correct myself: no, there were many problems and uncertainties back then too. But at the new exhibition Colour unleashed at the Gemeentemuseum Den Haag, I start having doubts again. Because the art on display is great, while the time period turns out to be more similar to the present than I realised. And there are a few more reasons why you should go - and actually right in the first week.
1. A time like ours?
In the entrance hall of Colour unleashed we see a film - in black and white. In a run of 5 minutes passes by a period image that should place the visitor back in time around 1900. With the rise of the telephone, telegraph and train, the world was getting smaller and smaller; with film and gramophone, it was becoming more mundane. Many wondered where the world was headed: weren't developments going too fast? The comparison with the rise of the internet and mobile technology in recent decades comes to mind. Is the world even smaller, an opportunity or a threat? Technological innovation and a troubled world - it is no different now than in the period of this exhibition, from 1885 to the start of the World War in 1914. But whether our era will produce such revolutionary art in retrospect is still an open question.
2. Belgian colour on Dutch cheeks
A recent exhibition at the Gemeentemuseum dealt with the Hague School. Although it was considered innovative in its time, its use of colour in particular is traditional. The great colour explosion came from Belgium through Jan Toorop and Henry van de Velde. They were members of the Brussels artists' association Les XX (Les Vingt). In 1885, they brought works by Van Gogh, Gauguin and Monet, among others, to The Hague for a sales exhibition. All went back unsold. 'Painting with peasants' is what Hague School chief Mesdag called the impressionist and pointillist works. With Mesdag in mind, the first room immediately shows why the Netherlands was not up to it. The distinct colours and loose touch of the new generation must have caused a shock. The exhibition features several works that also hung at the Les XX exhibition.
3. Rik Wouters
Speaking of Belgium. A special room is set up with work by Rik Wouters (1882-1916), public favourite in Flanders but relatively unknown in the Netherlands. Wouters combines figurative work - most often he painted his wife - with very intense use of colour. His paintings often have enormous depth. The great bronze Domestic concerns is always on display at the museum, but not before in this context.
4. Mondrian as a near-impressionist
You can never really avoid Mondrian at the Gemeentemuseum. Colour unleashed places relatively early work as Mill by sunlight alongside paintings by Jan Sluijters and Leo Gestel. These artists no longer want to express what you see, but what you feel with it. And that could just as well be nature as the bustling life in Paris. Here, too, the museum succeeds in making the contrast and shock of the new visible by Bal Tabarin by Sluijters opposite The running girl by Henri Evenepoel to hang. Evenepoel considers, Sluijters et al experience.
5. (Restored) masterpieces and loans
The exhibition features many loans from the Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Antwerp, as well as from other museums around the world and from private collections. Together with its own collection, the museum has thus managed to bring together a large number of genuine masterpieces. A number of works from its own collection have also been taken in hand in a special research and restoration project, leading - once again - to even more colour.
6. Colenbrander
Among the masterpieces are not only paintings. You don't always think about it, but the distinct colours of Colenbrander ceramics, many of which the Gemeentemuseum itself owns, also date from the period in question. So colour permeated not only autonomous visual art, but also design.
7. Autochromes: window on 1905
Very special are three autochromes from the Leiden University collection. Once again, we should consider ourselves very lucky with the collaboration between the museum and the university. Because what do we see? Autochromes are a very early form of colour photography, where, like a slide, the original exposed glass plate provides the image. The three examples on display date from 1905-1910 and were made by Berend Zweers. Unlike many contemporaries, he realised that photography could be used not only for documentary purposes, but also for creating art. The autochromes are incredibly fragile and can be shown to the public for the first time thanks to a special new process. This will be done in a special enclosure and for no longer than until 11 October. After that, copies will take their place. And that is why you should go quickly, because at the press of a button and with it exposure of one of these autochromes, you will be face to face with a moment from a good century ago. In colour. Moving.
Colour unleashed, Gemeentemuseum The Hague, 3 October 2015 to 3 January 2016
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