Everything in museums, galleries, on roundabouts and village squares, and hanging over sofas. And Marina Abramovic
Some say there is a tunnel of light you pass through when you die. Could be, there are people with near-death experiences who describe such a thing. Personally, I find the paintings depicting such tunnels of light rather kitschy. Clouds with a scary eye or a man with a beard at the end.... But now sculpture-dance-design artist...
There really is no better place to display press photos than a church. At least, as long as it is one of those Dutch churches like the one in Naarden. White plastered walls, no distracting statues and paintings. And yet that hallowed atmosphere that sort of belongs to what all those winners of World Press Photo 2015 portray: terrible stories, glorious victories and mysteries that...
In this Van Gogh year, the painter has become part of a real group, an artist community, something he never managed to do during his lifetime. With the exhibition 'When I Give Myself, I give Myself', the Van Gogh Museum connects 23 contemporary artists to the lonely Van Gogh, who had hardly any friends during his life and sold only one painting. The...
Last week, graduates of the Royal Academy of Art (KABK) in The Hague showed their final exam projects in an exhibition. An exhibition that every year is far too big to see everything in one week. But this year, above all, an exhibition that provoked: to think, to wonder, to smile and to come back again and again.
For eight years, the Mauritshuis researched and restored his painting 'Saul and David'. As a result, it can now be definitively attributed to Rembrandt. But the small exhibition 'Rembrandt? The Case of Saul and David' mainly shows how the museum collaborated with all kinds of different scientists and laboratories to unravel the numerous mysteries surrounding the canvas. As a visitor, you will be taken through the...
Fort Nieuwersluis is the biggest surprise of the art event Gimme Shelter. Until a year and a half ago, the defensive work was a no-go-area. The BB ('Bescherming Burgerbevolking') sat there until 1989 to protect telephone lines during, but especially after World War III, when the rest of the Netherlands would be hiding under the kitchen table from the H-Bomb. When the atomic-proof fortress became permanently obsolete, the...
The annual major sculpture expo in The Hague in 2015 is called 'Vormidable'. In its own museum, on Lange Voorhout and at several satellite locations, Museum Beelden aan Zee shows how Flemish art experienced a true revival from the 1990s onwards. Panamarenko, De Bruyckere, Fabre, but also lesser-known names renewed sculpture - in two opposite ways. Guest curator Stef van...
With its latest retrospective If We Ever Get To Heaven, EYE again convincingly and confidently presents itself as a museum that looks beyond film history. This was already evident in previous exhibitions such as Expanded Cinema, which showcased visual artists working at the intersection of film and art. Now William Kentridge has been given the honour of...
In the end, homo calculus - and who isn't, a "calculating man" - turns out to be primarily concerned with the monetary value of art objects, and only then - sometimes a long time later - with their beauty, artistic value or rarity. Every episode of the television programme Between Art and Kitsch demonstrates this. It also applies...
Christian von Hornsleth is exhibiting in Amsterdam, and there was an immediate small riot. An organisation that raises money against trafficking in women no longer wanted to receive a contribution from the proceeds of his exhibition in Amsterdam, because the artist, whose conceptual work often features porn images, would actually be an advocate of prostitution. Something Hornsleth himself vehemently denies. The...
Museum Beelden aan Zee placed a concrete sculpture by 26-year-old artist Catinka Kersten on the patio at the end of March: 'And everyone held their breath during that fraction of centuries'. It consists of five concrete human figures stacked on top of each other, which appear to be made of fabric. Kersten completed her studies at the Royal Academy of Art (KABK) in The Hague in 2013 with a series of hunting animals in plaster and cotton. The museum, with associated scientific institute and plaster library, is considered one of the figureheads of sculpture in the Netherlands. How did this museum come to choose such a young artist and what does inclusion in its collection mean for her?
The double exhibition 'Holland op z'n mooist - Op pad met de Haagse School' opens at the Dordrecht Museum on 5 April and at the Gemeentemuseum Den Haag on 4 April. The two museums are joining forces with Natuurmonumenten to show the nature of the late 19th century alongside that of today. In two exhibitions (genre pieces in Dordrecht, landscapes in The Hague),...
With 'The oasis of Matisse', the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam has put on a magnificent exhibition. Sixty years after there was last a major retrospective of Matisse in the Netherlands, his work is back on display in all its glory. So alongside 'Late Rembrandt' at the Rijksmuseum, there is another blockbuster in the capital. The thousands of visitors who attended the...
Eindhoven is the mecca of experimental electronica for a while every two years with the STRP Biennial. In the Brabant city of lights, you can enjoy no less than nine days of leading dance acts. In addition, experimental performances explore the intersection between film, art and technology. Culture Press makes a preselection. Hypnotic dance swell The British Factory Floor has one foot in the past, but looks musically to the future. Their...
In the halls of the Gemeentemuseum Den Haag, Mark Rothko has made way for photographer Anton Corbijn. A bigger difference hardly seems conceivable, but an exhibition with lots of pop photographs fits seamlessly into the museum's mission to bring 20th-century avant-garde art, stresses director Benno Tempel. Corbijn, who celebrates his 60th birthday this year, will be honoured with a double exhibition; besides...
You haven't seen this before: stop-motion animation with figures made of Chinese porcelain. In the short film Mr Sea Chinese artist Xue Geng has depicted an ancient legend about an explorer, a prostitute and a snake
In early March, The Great War Machine, the new play by director Joachim Robbrecht, premiered at Theater Frascati. A week earlier, at the Rotterdam Schouwburg Swamp Club to be seen, by French director Philippe Quesne. Both performances address the current political climate. Whereas Swamp Club is explicitly silent about the world it calls into question, The Great War Machine is instead a rhetorical spectacle, constructed from quotes from TEDtalks. Both performances make mechanisms felt, rather than pointing out culprits. Voluntarily withdrawing or being shut out, the neoliberal order does not seem to allow much more choice. There is no question of resistance.
The crisis is over. Especially if you are in the fine art business. In 2014, the global art market grew by 7% from the peak year of 2013. In total, the art trade turned over a value of 51 billion euros last year, making that market almost as big as the economy of Uzbekistan. The internationally authoritative website artnet reported that today
Not every piece of art can hang on every wall. Utrecht's Galerie Kuub has one such wall, which is a challenge for anyone wishing to hang a work of art in the otherwise generous space. This is because the wall is medieval, and over the centuries has had more layers, stamps and anchors added to it than an average new-build house will be able to handle in its lifetime. With or...
The critical commotion that has emerged around the film adaptation of E.L. James's book Fifty Shades of Grey seems to focus mainly on the good-natured tameness of the final product. Something that contrasts with the supposedly edgy nature of the book, where a virginal young woman allows herself to be sexually initiated by a rich SM yuppie. Film critic Antony Lane listed...
Late Rembrandt at the Rijksmuseum. Above all, that means lots of people. Long lines of admirers, who know they are (going to) see high level. Top level. And for that, everyone is willing to wait. The PR machine has done its job and now it's join the long queue and then shuffle past the many gazes, rakish lines and brushstrokes. Rembrandt (1606-1669), in his countless...
In Amersfoort, one art hall is empty and one art hall is full. KAdE, only recently completed and already successful, was dismantled five years after opening and moved to another, even newer building, across the railway line. However, the city council does not appear to have been properly informed about the financial consequences of this move and is now stuck with and noose of at least 10...
Last week, the Metaalkathedraal was celebrating. This 'creative breeding ground' in the picturesque no man's land between Utrecht and Leidsche Rijn can, thanks to a loan from a bank, grow into something that might become great fun for the neighbourhood, but also for people on the other side of town. The Metal Cathedral is an initiative of two artists. They...
Nathaniël Mellors is one of the funniest artists whose work is on show at Art Rotterdam. No moving painting, no coarse-grained fluid slides and no Arnoud Mik either: Mellors' latest work: The Sophisticated Neanderthal Interview, is well-acted comedy about a serious intellectual subject: the art world. Building on the discovery that Neanderthals were not at all the primitive bat-wielding losers where...
Ingres, Cimabue, Memling, Tiepolo, Goya, Van Eyck, Constable. Pure top names in art history and many of them hardly ever hang in Dutch museums. But now they do. The Mauritshuis in The Hague is showing no fewer than 36 works from the famous Frick Collection in New York from 5 February. And that museum has never before lent so many art treasures. Therefore, the Mauritshuis has...
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