It is a lovely summer book: Harem, the new novel by Ronald Giphart. And for the first time in years, a good dose of sex appears in a book by the Utrecht-based writer. 'Just the other day at a reading I was announced by a librarian: "Ladies and gentlemen, here is the man who knows all about sex!" Interview so with...
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.
Power and leadership, can one exist without the other? Toneelgroep Amsterdam presented a sampling of three types of leaders on Sunday 14 June at the Holland Festival with 'Kings of War'. Three historical plays by Shakespeare about the struggle for power between the Houses of Lancaster and York together provided the fuel for this performance. With large black letters on a white...
Tree monuments make visible the unexpected and violent strike of death. Usually along public roads but sometimes in more remote places. Amersfoort-based photographer Jeroen Hansen photographed hundreds of them in recent years, resulting in the recently published photo book Signs of Life. A bunch of flowers tied to a dented crash barrier. Candles, photos or a teddy bear at a sharp...
Moshen Rastani (1958) grins broadly, looks at me penetratingly, gestures, and puts his hand on his heart. "What is happening now, here, between you and me, in this conversation. That's what matters to me. We meet face to face. We communicate. Through each other's faces, we can visit the other's secret world. Such a camera is just a tool to make that contact."
Rastani was thrown into photography by the outbreak of the Iraq-Iran war. He emerged as the uncrowned king of Iranian war and documentary photography with his beautiful, hushed black-and-white portraits. He also did reportage in Lebanon and Bosnia & Herzegovina, and captures everyday life in Iran in his ongoing Iranian Family Project. Together with eight compatriots and kindred artists, his work is now on show at Francis Boeske Projects.
To make it 450e birth anniversary of William Shakespeare (1564-1616), Krzysztof Pastor created a full-length choreography for the National Ballet, loosely based on The Tempest (1611). The performance is part of the Holland Festival. Dramaturge Willem Bruls adapted Shakespeare's last play about the island exiled prince Prospero and his daughter Miranda into a script in which the story is told four times, from as many perspectives. The result is enchanting.
Erwin Olaf has a thing for wallpaper. The art photographer, known for his hushed and ominous compositions, thinks what is on a wall is at least as important as what is in front of it. The New Institute has now managed to combine that idea beautifully in an exhibition which shows both the sets of Erwin Olaf's most famous works, and a few wallpaper designs from the quivers of great artists.
I see a lot, but an exhibition that gives access to that contemporary art for outsiders is rarely among them. You have the Rijksmuseum with a nice overview of culture through the ages, but from 1900 onwards, the space for it becomes very small. So you don't know what's going on now. For that, you can go to the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, which shows the world's best. However, if you want a handy overview of what Dutch artists have created, it's best to go to Schiedam.
"I don't have a theatre background, but I know what I like." These words from Cammy Mai Tran are typical of a trend among young theatre-makers. They find the walls between different art disciplines to be oppressive. Increasingly, we see them walking right through those walls. And when the blow is over, new inspiration swirls richly over them.
With Black Box / Chambre Noire the Jewish Historical Museum presents the first exhibition by South African artist William Kentridge in the Netherlands. A multimedia artwork On the first genocide of the 20th century. Now on display at the Jewish Historical Museum.
She has been busy. Highly pregnant, Yasmeen Godder (Jerusalem, 1973) worked on her first choreography for Batsheva Dance Company. In a month, she stomped out her new show The Toxic Exotic Disappearance Act under the wings of Batsheva, and in between gave birth to a healthy daughter. For the third time, Israeli choreographer Yasmeen Godder presents her work...
You can hardly claim it was a surprise result, because for weeks - what shall I say, months - The Artist had been mentioned as a surefire Oscar favourite. Still, the crowning of this largely silent French black-and-white film that pays tribute to the end of the silent film era in Hollywood is proof that originality still counts in...
'In this museum, we so often extol the landscape, that for once we wanted to show the destruction, upheaval and impending change of the landscape.' According to Han Steenbruggen, director of Museum Belvedere in Heerenveen-Oranjewoud, it was time for an exhibition that shows what war, natural disasters and climate change do to the landscape: 'With this exhibition, we reflect and respond to...
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