ART-PREVIEW:Bye Bye De Stijl
Originally a publication, De Stijl was founded in 1917 by two pioneers of Abstract Art, Piet Mondrian and Theo van Doesburg. The magazine De Stijl became a vehicle for Mondrian’s ideas on art, and in a series of articles in the first year’s issues he defined his aims and used, perhaps for the first time, the term neo-plasticism. De Stijl had a profound influence on the development both of abstract art and modern architecture and design.
By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Centraal Museum Archive
The year 2017 marked 100 years of De Stijl, this renowned modern art movement has been presented and celebrated in a series of exhibitions across the Netherlands. The Centraal Museum presents “BYE BYE DE STIJL: Contemporary artists respond to De Stijl”, devoted to works by contemporary artists, from the 1990s until today, for whom the iconic works by Rietveld and Mondriaan are something to mock or to emulate, to interpret or to elaborate on. The exhibition takes its cue from several components of the installation by the Collective General Idea, “Infected Mondriaan” (1994). In response to the HIV/Aids epidemic, they made copies of Mondriaan’s paintings and Rietveld’s chairs, but replacing the yellow color by the green, which Mondriaan detested. The Collective General Idea was founded in Toronto in 1969 by Felix Partz, Jorge Zontal and AA Bronson. The collective interrogated media image culture through now legendary projects like File magazine, as well as paintings, installations, sculptures, mail art, photographs, videos, ephemera, TV programs and even a beauty pageant. The group’s transgressive concepts and provocative imagery challenged social power structures and traditional modes of artistic creation in ever-shifting ways, until Partz and Zontal’s untimely deaths from AIDS-related causes in 1994. In the exhibition featuring works by: Collective General Idea, Erik van Lieshout, Katja Mater, Mary Heilmann, Ding Yi, Barbara Visser, Marc Bijl and others, the artists offer some form of commentary on De Stijl. In his work Erik van Lieshout addresses a multitude of contemporary socio-political issues such as multiculturalism, right-wingers, the position of minorities and outsiders as well as the modern consumer society. Van Lieshout looks at these issues from a radically personal point of view, putting himself into the actual environment at hand. By typically not adapting to the general behavior of his surrounding he becomes an active player in the action which causes many humoristic situations but also provokes strong reactions of others. Reinier Lucassen is a representative of the style called Nieuwe Figuratie, the Dutch artistic movement which can be compared to the American Pop Art. His figurative style of painting combines everyday life elements and abstract symbols. Katja Mater’s work adopts a meta-perspective to confront the possibilities and limitations of photography. Rather than documenting moments in time, the artist records the numerous ways in which we can look at and think about photographic images. Instead of looking through photography as though it were a transparent medium, Mater aims to direct the viewer’s attention to photography itself. Barbara Visser is a conceptual artist whose project-based work is a dynamic work in progress. Visser’s investigations circle around polar themes such as of reality/fiction, original/copy, and ideal/reality. Visser’s work is truly multi-disciplinary, taking on whichever form is suitable of the project. It ranges from video to photography, performances, collages or architectural models.
Info: Centraal Museum, Agnietenstraat 1, Utrecht, Duration: 16/12/17-4/3/18, Days & Hours: Tue-Sun 11:00-17:00, https://centraalmuseum.nl
