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Cultivation by Radio-activity in the Electronic Circuit - Tetsumi Kudo

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If you might have questions or remarks, feel free to send an e-mail to info@stedelijk.nl. There's also the opportunity to visit the library at the Stedelijk Museum.

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Damien Hirst (b.1965) is a British contemporary artist. His varied practice explores the complex relationships between art, religion, science, life and death.

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Waste

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White Frosting 1964

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It is 1988 and Michael Jackson sits surrounded by golden flowers, in golden clothes, hugging close to him his pet chimpanzee, Bubbles. People walk around him and gawp. They don't know if they should laugh or feel creeped out or simply admire an innocent homage to genius.

This porcelain sculpture created by Jeff Koons was part of a series that raised him from being an artist known only by other artists to a celebrity in his own right. The series called Banality brought him the fame he had craved through the 1980s, since he first came from Pennsylvania to New York and supported himself in various ways, including dealing in commodities, while exhibiting vacuum cleaners in illuminated vitrines. In a photograph taken to advertise the exhibition, a young Koons poses with a class of small children, chalk in hand, a beatific smile on his face. On the blackboard he has written "Exploitthe masses" and "Banality as saviour". The other works included Ushering in Banality, a carved wooden polychrome group of two angels and a tracksuited boy tending a pig with a green ribbon round its neck; a porcelain figure of Leonardo da Vinci's Saint John the Baptist clutching a pig; and a statue of two grinning idiots nursing a row of blue puppies.

The art of Jeff Koons creates a world beyond taste. It rubs the least respectable mass-cultural artefacts into the noses of people brought up to think art is about the good, the true and the lofty. Two decades after he gave the world Banality, I meet him at London's Serpentine Gallery. It is the eve of his exhibition, Popeye Series, which stars the famous spinach-eating sailor and an inflatable lobster. The king of kitsch has never looked more kingly than he does now. Jeff Koons in 2009 is a mega-artist, a business artist, rivalled in commercial success and fame only by his friend Damien Hirst - "I've always felt very close to people like Damien, the Chapmans, Sarah Lucas." Unsurprisingly, as they are all visibly influenced by his work.

He employs more than 100 people in his New York studio, and before the markets crashed was selling individual works for more than $20m. That figure was cut in half in his most recent sales, but he doesn't seem too rattled, and with good reason; Koons aged 54 - however many insults his critics hurl - is treated with increasing respect, and even reverence, by museums. In 2008 alone he had a retrospective at the Art Institute of Chicago, a big exhibition at the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin and a show at the Palace of Versailles. Tate Modern, meanwhile, has opened a remarkable room of his works that form part of the new national collection donated by his former dealer Anthony d'Offay - "I think what Anthony did was really very generous."

And yet it hasn't been as smooth a rise as the glittering reflective edifice of today's Koons corporation might suggest. After Banality, he wondered what to do next.

"I just felt like I became an art star with my Banality show," Koons tells me. "I'll add another little star on my shoulder" - he found himself thinking - "and I'll be a film star. But what's the easiest way into film? To make, like, a porn film. So I thought, OK I'll make this billboard as if I'm starring in a movie, and it'll star myself and that woman that I saw in this magazine, this Cicciolina."

La Cicciolina is the working name of Hungarian-born porn star Ilona Staller, whose fame in Italy in the 1980s and 90s led to her being elected as an MP and later founding her own Party of Love. It wasn't her politics that Koons was drawn to, however, when he chanced upon a picture of her in a magazine. He promptly turned it into a sculpture of a woman lying in bubble bath being admired by a pig and two penguins.

He and Staller never did make a porn film. What emerged instead from their meeting was a series of sculptures and photographs portraying them having sex in many positions, settings and costumes.

It was called Made in Heaven and, in my opinion, was his greatest work. It was, says Koons, about "removing guilt and shame. I saw the Masaccio painting in Florence" - Masaccio's 15th century picture of Adam and Eve being cast out of paradise in the Brancacci Chapel - "and I was very moved by it; you know you see the guilt and shame that they're feeling, Adam and Eve." He wanted to create the answer to this painting - "a body of work that is kind of about after the fall, but all of this guilt and shame is removed".

To create Made in Heaven he borrowed all the trappings of Staller's own art. "I hired her and I used her same photographer, the same place where they developed the film. I wanted her to wear the same costumes, the same backdrops, because everything was a ready-made."

Koons is fascinated by sex - it keeps coming into our conversation, in a conversation about beauty for instance. "If I think of the word beauty, I think of a vagina", he replies. "I think of the vaginal - personally. That's what comes to mind for me, or Praxiteles' sculpture, the ass ... " The ass he's referring to is that of the Venus of Knidos, carved by the ancient Greek sculptor, Praxiteles, and displayed in a temple that allowed pilgrims to view the goddess of love from all angles. Classical writers tell that enthusiastic beholders stained the marble statue with their ejaculations. And this is a clue as to why he's keen on sex, as an artist. Eroticism has always been the territory par excellence where lofty ideals are betrayed by basic physical drives: where the beautiful becomes banal. This is why it made sense for Koons to explore pornography as art - because when we lust we are all Jeff Koons.

Staller, however, was not the ready-made object he originally paid for. At first it was bliss. They married. The lovemaking depicted in Made in Heaven bore fruit. But in December 1994, after their son Ludwig was born, they divorced. When I ask if he thinks people understand the images in Made in Heaven, his reply shocks me.

"I don't think people see them very often because I destroyed a lot of the works. I was going through a custody situation for my son, and Ilona kept trying to pull the work down to a level that it would be viewed not as artwork but as pornography, so I ended up just destroying most of the works because of that." In other words, Staller was promoting the works as part of her own image and oeuvre - which is not surprising since they were as much pornography as art, whatever he says.

Still, he is proud of some of the works in Made in Heaven. "I think Ilona's Asshole is a wonderful work. It's really about acceptance of the self and the confidence to display one's genitalia or display one's asshole."

In 1997 the art critic Robert Hughes pronounced a damning postmortem on Koons's career in his book American Visions. Koons, he said, "was the last art star to be cranked out by the Manhattan mechanism", a "starry-eyed opportunist", his pseudo-Baroque sculptures a calculated and obvious attempt to manipulate collectors through their desire to be "challenged". You might almost think that "Koons had psyched himself into thinking he was a latter-day Bernini. Or was it a pose? By now it hardly matters."

It hardly mattered because, in the years after he exhibited the most intimate moments of his brief marriage, Koons faded from view. After the marriage broke down, he got involved in a bitter custody fight over their son. In the eyes of detractors - Robert Hughes is not the only one - Koons is a fake, a poseur, a sterile manufacturer of heartless kitsch. But portraying your love life in graphic detail and then being humiliated by the collapse of the relationship you vaunted does not strike me as the work of an arch-manipulator or an emotionless fraud.

Koons never let go of the idea that he could get Ludwig back. That estrangement from his now teenage son has become part of the meaning of his art. He was in a hole and he kept digging - by making art about his pain.

When his son was born, he became interested in the simple shapes and colours of the baby's first toys. He set out to make art that a small child could relate to. But then events changed the meaning of the sculptures he planned. They became a way, in his imagination, of reaching out to the child he couldn't see. "I was trying to make art that my son could look on in the future and would realise I was thinking about him very much during these times . . . that he can look and see my dad's thinking about me, but to also embed in these things something that is bigger than all of us."

In 1992, Koons started work on the Celebration Series. His plan was to create colossal reproductions of easter eggs, party hats, valentine hearts, balloon animals and other "celebratory" images in shiny coloured metal. It turned out to be hugely expensive, and his domestic crisis didn't help. "I went through the divorce, the custody situation ... the work was very expensive to create and it took longer than we anticipated so works were placed at less expensive amounts than what it cost even to produce."

I ask about the emotional meaning of these works. "The sculpture Party Hat - that's my son's little birthday hat that he wore just one day before my ex-wife took him away."

The Celebration Series was eventually completed and, in 2000, when it started to be shown in museums around the world, it immediately renewed and deepened his reputation, at least with those prepared to give him a chance. When you gaze into the reflective blue surface of his Cracked Egg, your own face and those of the other people going by float in a seductive yet spooky polished metal mirror; a perfection that has been broken open, leaving part of the shell on the ground. There's an eerie power to these works that goes well beyond Koons's claim to be a celebratory artist. They are joyous lamentations; broken mirrors of a world losing touch with its loved ones.

Koons, the man who fell in love with his own ready-made, has a haunting piece of emotional advice for us all. "Inanimate objects are great but they're just inanimate objects and externalised images," he points out after spending years trying to connect with a faraway child by making monuments to the infantile. All that matters in art and life is "actual human interaction".

Koons seems to be constantly stretching, twisting, amplifying and reconfiguring the ordinary to make it strange. He has an eye for form, which he sees like his hero Salvador Dalí through a hypersexual filter. I show him a picture of Lips, a fantastically energetic painting he created in 2000 in which lips and an eye dance in the air with yellow pieces of sweetcorn. "That corn for me is a reference to Dalí. Dalí always loved corn ... but if you put two kernels together you have an ass." There speaks a sculptor.

Jeff Koons is an artist not of bland manufactured sheen but of edgy contradictions. On the one hand he wants to experience a world of innocent childlike gratification, of toys and party hats - he revels in telling me about his second marriage, six children in all, and two grandchildren from his older daughter, Shannon, 34. On the other hand, here is a man whose life was changed by his marriage to a porn star and her refusal to continue as his living art object.

It's a tale of American demands: Koons is at once determined to be pleased like a child and hungry to be satiated as an adult. The Popeye Series continues this impossible quest. It is dedicated to showing a series of works based around metal sculptures of inflatable toys. There are inflatable dolphins, inflatable lobsters, all turned into metal. The lobster is a homage to Dalí's Lobster Telephone. He tells me he identifies with Popeye's motto - "I yam what I yam." But on the cover he has designed for today's G2, he emphasises Popeye's muscular arm with its expanding tattoo of a tank. Is it a political comment? A phallic object? Both? It's interesting, and ambivalent and American and ludicrous.

Jeff Koons is a brave and original artist. His art declares the weirdness of its materials, its themes, its maker and its public. He insists there is no irony in what he does. When he's gone, this denial will be forgotten and he will surely be acclaimed as a satirist. He says his art is about liberation and acceptance and embracing the mainstream. Is it also a disturbing image of the modern world? "I really don't believe in judgments; it could be looking at political systems, social hierarchies and all these areas."

The very night after our interview, the death of Michael Jackson is announced. On the Friday I ask the sculptor of Michael Jackson and Bubbles for his comment. "We have lost a great artist." But look at it. White faced and hugging his chimpanzee, Jackson is not portrayed as the talented song-and-dance man everyone seems to want to remember, but an icon of the banal. Perhaps Jeff Koons is a secret moralist. Perhaps he is a great artist and perhaps he is just a great symptom. Whatever he is he has an eye for the pathologies of our time.

* This article was amended on 30 June 2009. The original said that Koons's Berlin exhibition was on the Museum Island. This has been corrected.

* information@serpentinegallery.org
Topics

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Jeff Koons is not just the king of kitsch. The mega-artist talks to Jonathan Jones

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It is 1988 and Michael Jackson sits surrounded by golden flowers, in golden clothes, hugging close to him his pet chimpanzee, Bubbles. People walk around him and gawp. They don't know if they should laugh or feel creeped out or simply admire an innocent homage to genius.

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Ushering in Banality

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Exhibition - 18 May until 13 Oct 2019

First solo exhibition by the Lebanese-American artist Walid Raad in the Netherlands. In seven galleries Raad presents his philosophical, politically charged, and often witty vision of the complexities of the Lebanese Civil War and developments in contemporary art in the Middle East.

The Stedelijk Museum presents the first solo exhibition by the Lebanese-American artist Walid Raad (b.1967) in the Netherlands. In Let's be honest, the weather helped he shares his perceptive, critical, politically engaged, and often playful perspective of the complexities of the Lebanese wars and the current boom of contemporary art in the Middle East. Raad works in a wide variety of visual media, complemented by performances and essays. The exhibit features photos, drawings, videos, and sculptures, including new work that will be on display for the first time.

Walid Raad's oeuvre delivers sharp analyses of the historical, political, economic, and aesthetic aspects of war. His artworks concentrate on the Lebanese wars as well as the Middle East's rapidly burgeoning art world.

On view in each room are often entirely new combinations of series from Raad's three major long term projects.

Walid Raad / The Atlas Group, I might die before I get a rifle_Device 007, 2004. Met dank aan de kunstenaar & Sfeir-Semler Gallery Hamburg / Beirut

For the most part, my work is about the effects of violence on bodies and minds, on culture and tradition.

The Atlas Group (1989-2004)

In The Atlas Group (1989-2004), Raad created stories and documents about the Lebanese wars of the past few decades. Borrowing from the genres of literary fiction and conceptual photography, Raad imagines documents, characters and events that could have existed in times of war. Taken as a whole, the material comprises an archive of sorts, one that holds significant meaning for Raad, who views his imaginary documents as potential artifacts for the writing of a new history. In his practice with The Atlas Group, Raad adopts the role of archivist presenting us with his finds. These stem from historical material that is filtered through his imagination and research in an attempt to reach some of the less visible effects of war.

Sweet talk commissions Beirut (1987-ongoing) is composed of various photo assignments. Beginning in the late 1980s, Raad starting commissioning himself to document Beirut's changing urban landscape, its streets, buildings, and shopfronts. He concentrated on the neighborhoods where he lived, just on the margins of the urban battlegrounds. This project continued in the "post-war" as a grandiose new city center emerged. When asked about the project, Raad says,

"In 1987, I committed myself to producing photographs in Beirut. I titled this commitment Sweet talk, as a reference to the city's residents 'sweet-talking' themselves, by creating fascinating ways to live in a city that was under the constant threat of military assault, urban destruction and renewal."

The theme of Raad's third project, Scratching on things I could disavow (2007-ongoing), engages with how violence affects tradition and art in material and non-material ways. His attention falls on the rise of new infrastructures for the arts in the Arab world, with particular emphasis on the Gulf states. On the one hand, Raad addresses the struggle for soft power and prestige in today's Arab world via the building of massive new museums such as the Louvre Abu Dhabi. On the other hand, he explores how Islamic, modern or contemporary "Arab" artworks resist, adapt, or cloak themselves as they enter these new spaces.

Walid Raad. Let's be honest, the weather helped_3 US, 1998. 2006. Pigmented inkjet print, 46,8 x 72,4 cm. Courtesy the artist & Sfeir-Semler Gallery Hamburg / Beirut

Among the new works in the survey are Raad's three sculptures titled, I feel a great desire to meet the masses once again _ VI, XVII, XXXIII. As Raad writes,

"In 1975, at the beginning of the wars, most public monuments in Beirut were hastily disassembled and stored in unmarked crates. The crates were dispersed to various secure storage sites. Thirty years later, the crates were gathered and opened in the hope of reassembling the monuments. However, the lack of a breakdown and reassembly protocol resulted in the odd composition of new public works, three of which are on display here."

The exhibition is organized by the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam in collaboration with Moderna Museet, Stockholm. The exhibition goes on view at Moderna Museet from 15 February-10 May 2020.

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Walid Raad. Sweet talk.commissions (Beirut 1994), 2018, video still. Courtesy the artist & Sfeir-Semler Gallery Hamburg / Beirut

Performance Les Louvres and/or Kicking the Dead

Due to Walid Raad's performance Les Louvres and/or Kicking the Dead three galleries will be closed from 11.45 am and 2.45 pm onwards on various dates. The other galleries of the Walid Raad exhibition remain open to visitors. Tickets for the performance can be purchased in advance online.
More info & tickets Please note: places are limited.
PUBLICATION

An artist's book will be published on the occasion of the exhibition. The book highlights two of Walid Raad's thoughtful and witty artworks. Better be watching the clouds concentrates on the local, regional and international political figures whose faces and names became fixtures in the Lebanese landscape; I want to be able towelcome my father to my house leans on diaries that Raad's father kept throughout the wars. Raad present us with documents that seem to belong to some kind of archivist, a witness and a mediator. He proceeds from found photographs and other artifacts to create the documents that provoke his but also our imagination. Published in collaboration with Roma Publications. Graphic design by Roger Willems. Price € 27,50.

Past

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Exhibition - 18 May until 13 Oct 2019 First solo exhibition by the Lebanese-American artist Walid Raad in the Netherlands. In seven galleries Raad presents his philosophical, politically charged, and often witty vision of the complexities of the Lebanese Civil War and developments in contemporary art in the Middle East.

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Exhibition - 6 Apr until 11 Aug 2019

First large survey of the Austrian artist Maria Lassnig in the Netherlands. Maria Lassnig is internationally regarded as one of the leading women artists of the twentieth and twenty first centuries.

Maria Lassnig (1919-2014) made her name with her 'Körperbewusstseinsbilder', or 'body awareness' paintings, in which she depicts the sensations experienced by her body, by means of which she defined her relationship to the world.

Maria Lassnig - Ways of Being features more than 200 loaned artworks, with key pieces such as Du oder Ich, Woman Power, Krankenhaus, Dame mit Hirn and her last self-portrait S elbstporträt mit Pinsel. In addition to her paintings and drawings, the survey is remarkable for presenting a large selection of her films and sculptures, including works that have never been shown before.

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© Maria Lassnig Foundation for the reproduced works

Stedelijk shows 'well-kept secret'

After completing her training at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, from 1950 onwards, Maria Lassnig focused on abstract art. Several visits to Paris inspired her to experiment with colour, form and informal painting. In Vienna she came into contact with Monseigneur Otto Mauer, a resolute supporter of the Austrian avant-garde. She joined the 'Hundsgruppe' ('Dog Pack'), an off-shoot of the artists' organisation Art Club, with members such as Arik Brauer, Ernst Fuchs and Arnulf Rainer.

From 1960 to 1968, Lassnig lived and worked in Paris. After initially concentrating on 'Strichbilder'-large paintings with shapes that consisted entirely of coloured lines-she went on to embrace a more figurative style. In 1968 she moved to New York, where her 'body awareness painting' went largely unrecognised. She responded by pouring her energies into a realistic form of painting, and animated film. She released some animated films. Lassnig's legacy includes a great many other films and film fragments, a selection of which can be seen in the exhibition, as well as a number of her notebooks which include storyboards for the films.

Maria Lassnig, 'Dame mit Hirn', ca. 1990 - 1999. © Maria Lassnig Foundation

I searched for a reality that was more fully in my possession than the exterior world, and I found it waiting for me in the body house in which I dwell, the realest and clearest reality.

In 1974 she founded the feminist avant-garde group Women/Artist/Filmmakers, Inc. with other female (film) artists, including Martha Edelheit, Carolee Schneemann and Silvianna Goldsmith. Throughout this time, she exhibited her paintings and graphic work mainly in Vienna. Although the style of Lassnig's work constantly shifted, her themes remained the same. While immersing herself in her central theme of 'body awareness', she also explored themes such as family, death, and urgent social issues ranging from the role of women in society, political conflicts, to technological progress and communication between humans and animals. She embellished nothing, and her works are often rich in (self) irony, which is also clear from many of her titles, like Selbstportr ät als Playboystuhl and Die neuronale Verschwendung.

The statement Lassnig made in 1992 about her approach to drawing most likely applies to all her art:

"The moral issue of exaggeration: one step too far and it becomes bizarre; not something I aspire to. The moral issue of time: how much time do I give an artwork? Every drawing is a triumph over the restlessness of the world."

Maria Lassnig, 'Selbst mit Meerschweinchen', 2000. Private Collection. Courtesy Hauser & Wirth Collection Services. © Maria Lassnig Foundation

In 1980, when she was appointed the first female professor to teach painting at the Academy for Applied Arts in Vienna, Lassnig's work garnered far greater recognition. In 1988 she was awarded the Austrian State Prize and, in 2013, was the recipient of the Venice Biennale's Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement. In the meantime, she is internationally regarded as one of the most important artists of the 20th and 21st centuries.

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Publication

The exhibition is accompanied by an extensive catalog: Maria Lassnig - Ways of Being. This richly illustrated publication includes essays by Wolfgang Drechsler, Stefanie Proksch-Weilguni, curators Beatrice von Bormann and Antonia Hoerschelmann, and a biography by Johanna Ortner of the Maria Lassnig Foundation.

The catalog (208 pages) is published by Hirmer Verlag and appears in English, German and Dutch.
Price English / Dutch edition: € 29,50 (paperback).

Maria Lassnig's studio

Welcome in Maria Lassnig's studio, where you can experience how Maria Lassnig thought and operated. We invite you to sit down on one of the benches. Do you feel comfortable? What shape does your body have now? How does it feel? Discover what Maria Lassnig meant with her term "body awareness" by drawing the body parts you feel the most. Is it your bottom, your upper legs, your back, or maybe your arms? Or do you feel something different? You can find Maria Lassnig's studio in gallery 1.16.

INSPIRATION FOR YOUNG MAKERS

For the exhibition Maria Lassnig - Ways of Being the Stedelijk Museum worked together with students from the HMC vocational college for woodworking, furniture, and interior design. Students Storm de Jong, Niels Hoogewerf, and Dirk Schoutens took Lassnig's use of color, shapes, and themes as a source of inspiration for their own furniture designs.

In Maria Lassnig's Studio you can also create your own short animation, like Maria Lassnig. Grab a flip book, draw, and flip it!

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Stedelijk & HMC Amsterdam

Past

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Maria Lassnig - Ways of being | Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam

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Exhibition - 6 Apr until 11 Aug 2019 First large survey of the Austrian artist Maria Lassnig in the Netherlands. Maria Lassnig is internationally regarded as one of the leading women artists of the twentieth and twenty first centuries.

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Willem Hendrik Crouwel is one of the greatest graphic designers worldwide. He studied at the Academie Minerva (Art School) in Groningen. After two years spent collaborating with the prominent Dutch painter and designer Dick Elffers (1910-1990), he attended the evening classes at the IvKNO-Instituut voor Kunstnijverheidsonderwijs (Institute for Craftsmanship Education) in Amsterdam, today known as the Rietveld Academy.

In 1955 he opened an office together with Kho Liang Ie (1927-1975)-a Dutch, Indonesian-born designer-working in the fields of exhibition, graphics, and product design. One of Crouwel's first clients was the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven for which he designed catalogs, invitations, and posters until 1964. When Edy de Wilde (1919-2005)-director of the Van Abbemuseum-became director of the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam he took Crouwel with him. Until the end of his directorship in 1985, Crouwel was solely responsible for the Stedelijk's identity, designing almost all its posters and catalogs. For the Stedelijk, he developed a modular grid system that provided visual consistency to the museum's graphic identity. His growing attitude to grid-based design resulted in the nickname Mr. Gridnik, the same of a typeface he designed in 1973 for Olivetti.

In 1963 he co-founded Total Design, the first multi-disciplinary design firm in The Netherlands. Other founding members were Friso Kramer and Benno Wissing, soon joined by Ben Bos. It soon became one of the best design offices worldwide, serving prestigious clients such as De Bijenkorf, the Dutch Post Office (PTT), Peter Stuyvesant, Randstand, the Schiphol Airport, and the Dutch Pavilion for the 1970 Osaka World Fair. During the 1960s his work began to be widely published on international design magazine, such as Domus.

In 1967 he released the well-known, experimental typeface called New Alphabet, conceived to work with the limited CRT (Cathode Ray Tube) technology used by early computer monitors. This technology rendered images in large pixels that made curvilinear letterforms difficult to reconstruct, thus Crouwel used only straight lines and diagonals. New Alphabet is, in Crouwel's words, "never meant to be really used," but a statement on the impact of new technologies on centuries of typographic tradition. In 2011 it was acquired for the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York, that include several other projects designed by Crouwel.

Member of AGI (Alliance Graphique Internationale) since 1957, Officer of the Order of Orange-Nassau, Officer of the Most Excellence Order of the British Empire, Knight of the Order of the Netherlands Lion, and Honorary Royal Designer for Industry. In 1963 he became the first General Secretary of Icograda (the International Council of Graphic Design Associations). He also received numerous awards, including the Piet Zwart Prize and the Anton Stankowski Preis in 1991, and the Gerrit Noordzij Prize in 2009.

Crouwel taught during his whole career. In the 1950s he gave a design course at the Royal Academy of Art and Design (AKV) in 's-Hertogenbosch. In 1965 he gave a typography course at the Delft University, where in 1972 he was appointed Associate Professor. In 1980 he became a full Professor and in 1985 he was appointed Dean of the Faculty. At the same time, he was appointed Director of the Boijmans van Beuningen Museum in Rotterdam, holding this position until his retirement in 1993. From 1987 to 1993 he also taught at the EUR (Erasmus University in Rotterdam).

Wim Crouwel is a virtuoso of experimentation, who both lived and anticipated his own time. He combined rigorous structural logics with meaningful expressiveness, showing an extraordinary mastery in color and typography, making letters becoming wonderful images. He produced many of the few masterpieces that perfectly match functionality with aesthetics, and could be truly considered great works of both art and graphic design.

Enjoy your reading,

"Akzidenz Grotesk was not available in Holland. When I did my first larger graphic design commissions-and I wanted to use Akzidenz Grotesk-I would buy Swiss newspapers and cut the letters out and glue them in place, and then take photographs to use as artwork."

"Graphic design is not a luxury, but a necessity," 1968.

"It's an absolute necessity to have good graphic design at one's disposal," 1968.

"I was very interested in modern architecture, and I read a lot of books about it. Every Wednesday afternoon [...] I went to the library and looked through the architecture and interiors magazines. [...] I learned a lot from books."

"I always used one word to make an image, a kind of image-based typography."

Q&APublished Sep 16, 2013

Recorded May 7, 2013

What did you want to do when you were growing up?
To become an architect.

What was your educational path?
High School (Beta Direction) and Art Academy (painting, decorative art, and sculpture). In art school I thought of becoming a painter.

Which was your favorite subject at school?
Drawing classes.

When and how did your career start?
It started in 1952 after I left my birth place, Groningen, and went to Amsterdam. Through the advice of an older colleague graphic designer, I got a job in an exhibition firm. Gradually I became their designer of exhibitions. To learn graphic design in that period I went to evening classes at the Academy in Amsterdam.

How your design has evolved since that time?
After about three years in that company I started my own freelance practice as a designer. Gradually I found my way. For that, the 1950s were very important.

What would you like to design today?
One more experimental typeface, but since that is a hell of a job-and I am old-I don't think it will ever be realized.

Has the way people perceive the design changed?
Since the computer with its programs entered this world, everyone thinks he or she can design.

Massimo Vignelli says that "Design is One," and that a designer has to deal with "the spoon to the city," as Adolf Loos once said. Is this approach still possible?
In today's world design is as important as it has ever been.

A designer you admire.
A graphic designer that I admired already when he was still alive, and who influenced me very much, is Josef Müller-Brockmann.

A piece of design.
The furniture collection of Charles Eames.

A piece of architecture.
The new extension of the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, designed by my son Mels.

Without considering technology, what are the main differences between the design from the past and the current one?
The principles of design have not changed. Only the world is in a constant change.

What would you recommend to a young designer?
Keep your radar turning in order to see everything that happens, and make your own choice.

How would you define a good design?
Fulfilling its purpose in a straight forward way.

How would you describe your design?
For me, creating structure is a most important means.

Which was your favourite game when you were a child?
Building tents for a circus. ["Every year a circus was held near our house, and I was always very interested in this. Not because of the circus performances, but because of the tent and the tent's construction. It intrigued me. At home I made a small tent from old drapes and wires, and put nails in the floor to construct a real tent. I was very interested in technical installations and manufacturing techniques." From "A Graphic Odyssey" (Unit Editions, 2011)].

© 2013-16 Wim Crouwel, Nicola-Matteo Munari. All rights reserved.

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Q&APublished Feb 8, 2016

Recorded July 18, 2015

What has been the most important book to you as a designer?
There are many books that were important for me. But most important for me were the books of Josef Müller Brockmann.

Did you have a design mentor? If yes, what did you learn from him?
I did not have a real direct mentor. But I learned from a number of designers: Max Bill, Josef Müller Brockmann, Karl Gerstner, Emil Ruder, Richard Paul Lohse. The main lessons were on structure.

What was your strongest skill as a designer?
Typography and three-dimensional design.

What is the thing that you have enjoyed the most of being a designer?
Never a dull moment!

What did you enjoy the most of working in Amsterdam?
It is a lively and nice city to live in.

What do you think is the most effective way of presenting a project?
To tell the client what made you find the right solution. Explain your way of thinking.

What is the importance of experience? How it can contribute to better address a project?
The knowledge how to understand a project.

Do you think that your activity as director of Boijmans-van-Beuningen Museum influenced the quality of your design? What kind of relation there was between the two activities?
My directorship came late in my career. My most important work lay behind me. I just went on being myself, it was a fresh new beginning. I hardly did any design work during these eight years. I enjoyed it very much.

Should design produce things which are necessarily useful?
This is wishful thinking. In reality, design is often not useful at all.

What positive contribution design can give to society?
Any creative way of thinking can be positive for society, especially the conceptual facets of design.

Thank you very much.
Thank you.

© 2015-16 Wim Crouwel, Nicola-Matteo Munari. All rights reserved.
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Archivio Grafica Italiana is the first digital resource to the Italian graphic design heritage. Founded by Nicola Munari in 2015.

Design consultancy based in Piacenza, Italy. Founded by Nicola Munari in 2015, it operates in the whole field of design.

© 2013-16 Nicola-Matteo Munari. All rights reserved.

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Willem Hendrik Crouwel is one of the greatest graphic designers worldwide. He studied at the Academie Minerva (Art School) in Groningen. After two years spent collaborating with the prominent Dutch painter and designer Dick Elffers (1910-1990), he attended the evening classes at the IvKNO-Instituut voor Kunstnijverheidsonderwijs (Institute for Craftsmanship Education) in Amsterdam, today known as the Rietveld Academy.

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Nascida na França em 1930 e criada em Nova York, Niki de Saint Phalle é um dos artistas internacionais que se destacaram usando a técnica do papel machê. Em 1965, ela criou as primeiras Nanás (em francês, moças), esculturas que lhe deram fama. Feitas de lã, fibra de algodão, papel machê e tela de arame, as Nanás são grandes bonecas que representam o mundo feminino. Também são de autoria de Niki de Saint Phalle as esculturas da praça Igor Stravinsky, em frente do Centro Cultural Beaubourg, no centro de Paris, França.

Ex-modelo fotográfico das revistas Vogue, Harper's Bazaar e Life nos anos 40, a artista francesa se notabilizou por inventar um mundo de cores puras e movimentos lúdicos. Niki, hoje com 66 anos, expõe 87 trabalhos entre esculturas, serigrafias, litografias e fotos de seus grandes projetos públicos como o monumental O jardim do tarô ou Dolores, peça em poliéster pintado de 5,5m de altura. O universo da artista inclui ainda outros materiais do tipo fibra de vidro, gesso ou tela de arame. São obras de impacto com ironia e humor, pontuadas por um alegre colorido, marcadas por expressivas e apoteóticas figuras femininas, redondas e generosas.

".quanto a mim, eu me mostraria. Mostrando tudo. Meu coração, minhas emoções. Verde-vermelho-amarelo-azul-violeta. Ódio, amor, riso, medo, ternura..." Niki de Saint Phalle

"Niki de Saint Phalle é uma artista moderna, sua obra expressa a irreverência do nosso tempo; incorpora outras linguagens da arte do século XX para criar o seu extraordinário vocabulário, instintivo por vezes, que lhe confere uma originalidade comparável a de outros artistas deste século - Gaudi, Miró, Dubuffet e Calder.

Niki expressa suas paixões e suas apreensões de maneira lúdica; brinca com a cor, com a luz, com o espaço, questões formais criadas para instigar o espectador - uma aparente eficiência de comunicação imediata, mas há que se ler sobretudo nas entrelinhas de seu discurso-espaço e seguir o mergulho psíquico do âmago de sua obra.

Ela trata com certos temas, de maneira cortante, desconcertante, irônica mesmo; sua constante vitalidade traduz, por vezes, um universo denso, terrível, corroído e perverso; mas Niki encontra saídas na mitologia, numa procura fecunda da religiosidade, através dos mitos que povoam esse seu grande mundo: dos deuses do Egito às cartas do Tarô, do Velho Testamento, da Vida e da Morte. De uma reflexão fina, ela convoca o espectador a penetrar mais fundo ao encontro de si mesmo, encontro de suas circunstâncias.

É também contemporâneo o uso dos mais diversos materiais, entrecortados por sua cor luminosa: suas esculturas são construídas com espelhos, vidro, plástico, tecidos e bronze como embutidos arquitetônicos; mais ainda, o lúdico permeia sua constante inquietação, transfigurada em pássaros, nanás, animais, serpentes, no dia e na noite.

Ela usa da astúcia crítica do cotidiano para ameaçar a ordem estabelecida: daí a contemporaneidade da escultura de Niki de Saint Phalle, de uma obra em constante transformação, que denuncia, desmente, discute. Atitude e modernidade perante a linguagem discursiva do mundo que nos rodeia." Emanoel Araujo - Diretor da Pinacoteca do Estado:

"Pela presença constante da memória de sua infância, pela dificuldade que teve em se impor como artista mulher, por sua luta sempre renovada contra todas as formas de poder - político, religioso ou social - Niki de Saint Phalle é hoje o símbolo de uma forma de-expressão artística liberada, primitiva e cheia de humor, que atinge prontamente a sensibilidade popular. O encontro de sua obra com o público brasileiro é um momento muito esperado, pois Niki de Saint Phalle está na vanguarda de uma civilização cujas origens e energia vital estão em perfeita sintonia com seu conhecimento das forças originais misteriosas que habitam cada ser. Ela sabe revelar essas forças em sua escultura, tocando o inconsciente por sua maneira de expressar com humor aquilo que atinge as sensibilidades em seu âmago.

Em uma linguagem, à primeira vista, próxima da infantil, fala-nos de coisas sérias ou alegres, da morte, do pensamento místico, dos mistérios do destino, do mundo animal, do paraíso ou do inferno, do amor. Exprime, com a violência de seu humor, seus compromissos de artista e de mulher, sem cair na armadilha do sistema, pois é um ser livre que deixa sua energia dizer que se pode mudar o mundo e que as crianças, o lado infantil que ainda vive em nós, são quem melhor compreende seu universo. Exalta a subversão para deixar falar as forças vivas do ser.

Niki de Saint Phalle, cuja cultura se nutriu de Gaudí, de Facteur Cheval, dos dadaístas, é sem dúvida a última representante da Arte Bruta, pois transcendeu sua adesão ao Surrealismo e ao Novo Realismo, impondo sua inocência a esses grupos artísticos.

O público brasileiro perceberá sem dúvida a expressão dos temas maiores de sua obra, como a utilização que faz da cor. Soube inventar um novo mundo de cores puras, que cantam um hino à vida e que acompanham seu desenho composto de linhas infinitamente trançadas, dédalo que revela os aspectos mais tormentosos de seus pensamentos.

Com a linha sinuosa de suas esculturas e a violência de suas cores frescas, conta-nos os mistérios do tarô, a simplicidade das flores, o triunfo da mulher, a beleza das paisagens desérticas. Gosta de esculpir com humor uma caveira, o Diabo, a Serpente, Adão e Eva, a Justiça, a Temperança... tantas esculturas e tantos símbolos que alimentam o destino humano.

Jean Gabriel Mitterrand - curador da exposição

Conheça as obras do artista

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Nascida na França em 1930 e criada em Nova York, Niki de Saint Phalle é um dos artistas internacionais que se destacaram usando a técnica do papel machê. Em 1965, ela criou as primeiras Nanás (em francês, moças), esculturas que lhe deram fama.

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Shooting Altar

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Bus Riders

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Le Atelier Populaire, Jesus Forjans (right)

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Le Atelier Populaire, Jesus Forjans (right)

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Painting, Smoking, Eating is autobiographical, depicting the artist lying in bed, smoking, with a plate of French fries balanced on his chest. Guston's red, pink and grey pallet exacerbates the painting's unsettling mood. The artist's head, missing a nose and mouth and containing only one eye, takes the shape of a lima bean. As with the other objects, such as the shoes, the lima bean-shaped head returns in several of his pictures. He uses them to establish a personal vocabulary of forms and iconography. Guston presents these elements to express ideas about his personal worries or misfortunes. At this point in his life, excessive eating habits and smoking three packs of cigarettes a day began to affect Guston's health. His work from this time can generally be described as grotesque and shows the tragic side of his own existence.

© McKee Gallery, 2008

Need more information?

If you might have questions or remarks, feel free to send an e-mail to info@stedelijk.nl. There's also the opportunity to visit the library at the Stedelijk Museum.

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More work from this maker

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Painting, Smoking, Eating - Philip Guston

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Painting, Smoking, Eating is autobiographical, depicting the artist lying in bed, smoking, with a plate of French fries balanced on his chest. Guston's red, pink and grey pallet exacerbates the painting's unsettling mood. The artist's head, missing a nose and mouth and containing only one eye, takes the shape of a lima bean.

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Definição
A noção vem sendo utilizada por certos estudiosos para designar um desdobramento crítico do minimalismo, que tem lugar nos Estados Unidos em meados da década de 1960, e cujos principais expoentes são Richard Serra (1939) e Eva Hesse (1936-1970). Falar em expansão crítica do minimalismo não deve sugerir idéias como ultrapassagem ou superação. Ao contrário, trata-se de pensar em desenvolvimento de princípios gestados no interior mesmo do minimalismo, ainda que a ênfase dos trabalhos realizados aponte no sentido da formação de uma nova sensibilidade. Os artistas reunidos sob o rótulo pós-minimalismo, ainda que muito diferentes entre si, se detêm no processo de feitura das obras, na pesquisa com a cor e nas substâncias e materiais utilizados, que funcionam como uma espécie de 'assinatura' das obras: o chumbo de Serra, o neon de Keith Sonnier, o feltro de Barry Le Va. Uma recusa ao alto grau de simplificação e ao intelectualismo presentes no minimalismo levam alguns estudiosos a ver no pós-minimalismo uma arte 'antiformalista', que dialoga com diversas tendências artísticas: com as 'esculturas moles' de Claes Oldenburg, com o expressionismo abstrato, com a arte pop e, em alguns casos, com o surrealismo (as obras de Lucas Samara, por exemplo).

No interior do minimalismo - que privilegiou as formas abstratas e geométricas, despidas de acentos ilusionistas ou metafóricos - talvez sejam os trabalhos de Robert Morris (1931-2018) os mais diretamente relacionados à nova tendência pelo modo como enfatizam a percepção. O trabalho de arte para Morris se define como o resultado de relações entre espaço, tempo, luz e campo de visão do observador. Se isso é verdade, sobretudo para as várias obras produzidas entre 1965 e 1966 - por exemplo, o grupo de trabalhos em forma de 'L', em que formas idênticas parecem diferentes em função de sua posição no espaço -, entre 1966 e 1967, a ênfase do artista repousa sobre o material empregado. A maior atenção concedida às propriedades intrínsecas dos materiais e aos seus processos de formação, leva-o a trabalhos que ele denomina antiforma, como por exemplo Sem título [Emaranhado] (1967-8), em que 254 pedaços de feltro, de tamanhos diferentes, são colocados sobre o solo, como num 'bolo' ou 'emaranhado'. A composição resulta diretamente da ação e do emprego de material flexível: no caso, o feltro maleável. O trabalho não tem forma fixa e sua principal razão de ser reside na execução da tarefa, cujo ritmo é marcado pelo acaso. Nos termos de Morris, o objetivo desses trabalhos é "deslocar-se para além dos objetos".

Os trabalhos antiforma de Morris terão enorme influência, seja em Robert Smithson (1938-1973) e em seus earthworks, seja nas esculturas de Richard Serra e Eva Hesse. Serra - conhecido por suas esculturas de grandes dimensões feitas de aço cor-ten não trabalhado, ou blocos de aço forjados - realiza suas primeiras esculturas em 1966 utilizando materiais não convencionais, como borracha e fibra de vidro. De 1969 a 1970, executa suas séries intituladas Splash, em que chumbo derretido é atirado na junção entre as paredes e o chão. Nessa mesma época, têm início as peças Prop, formadas por finos cilindros ou placas de chumbo apoiados em lâminas do mesmo material. Ainda em 1970, irá colaborar com R. Smithson na execução do Spiral Jetty no Great Salt Lake, o que terá desdobramentos em suas obras posteriores. A íntima relação entre trabalho artístico e natureza, a partir da transformação do ambiente, e a confecção de peças de grandes dimensões que resistem à observação distanciada - é preciso que o observador se coloque dentro delas, percorrendo os caminhos e passagens que projetam -, vão ser exploradas nas obras públicas de Serra, colocadas em ruas e praças. Tilted Arc (1981) é talvez uma das mais conhecidas e polêmicas. A gigantesca 'parede' de aço inclinada toma conta da Federal Plaza, Nova York, redefinindo o espaço, as passagens e seus vãos. Oito anos depois, é retirada do local, em função dos sucessivos conflitos entre o artista e a opinião pública. Os trabalhos de Serra - sólidos e pesados e, ao mesmo tempo, leves, dinâmicos, em precário equilíbrio - jogam com a tensão forma/antiforma projetada por Morris, interpelando diretamente o observador, sua percepção e o seu corpo.

Nos trabalhos de Eva Hesse observam-se preocupações semelhantes, ainda que os resultados sejam outros. Antes de mais nada, a artista explora mais amplamente materiais não-rígidos, que driblam a austeridade geométrica do minimalismo, como em Contingent (1969). A obra é composta a partir de oito grandes faixas retangulares paralelamente dispostas e penduradas no teto. Feitas de gaze e látex, e arrematadas, nas pontas, por fibra de vidro translúcido, as faixas são semelhantes mas essencialmente distintas. "São oito", diz ela, "penduradas regularmente, mas muito diferentes uma da outra. São geométricas, mas não são. Elas são do modo como são e do modo como o material e o fiberglass definem". O interesse por materiais incongruentes, que a artista trabalha de maneira quase artesanal - embalando, torcendo, fiando etc. - se associa à pesquisa da forma e às sugestões corpóreas que os trabalhos sistematicamente oferecem. Um cubo sobre o solo, com o lado superior vazado, feito de tela de aço galvanizado e tubos de plásticos. O exterior e o interior da peça estão à mostra. Visíveis também os milhares tubos plásticos enfiados à mão na tela. As conotações corpóreas se explicitam, fundadas no jogo entre fora - o revestimento - e dentro, as entranhas. Funções corporais são nitidamente exploradas em trabalhos como Hang up (1965-6), que articula uma estrutura retangular pendurada com um tubo que sai da peça e cai sobre o solo, sugerindo a circulação de fluidos. O retângulo e o tubo encontram-se envolvidos por tecidos, como uma espécie de bandagem. O título, por sua vez, pode ser lido como referência a um tipo de patologia neurológica.

Ao lado de Serra e Hesse, podem ser lembrados ainda os nomes de Richard Tuttle, Bruce Nauman e James Rosenquist. A referência a Frederick Lane Sandback (1943) é menos comum, mas nem por isso menos interessante. Suas linhas e barbantes, que definem limites e aberturas no espaço, atestam a vitalidade de uma geração recente de minimalistas. No Brasil, é possível mencionar as obras de José Resende (1945), Carlos Fajardo (1941) e Carmela Gross (1946) como desdobramentos das pesquisas pós-minimalistas.

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Pós-minimalismo | Enciclopédia Itaú Cultural

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Definição A noção vem sendo utilizada por certos estudiosos para designar um desdobramento crítico do minimalismo, que tem lugar nos Estados Unidos em meados da década de 1960, e cujos principais expoentes são Richard Serra (1939) e Eva Hesse (1936-1970). Falar em expansão crítica do minimalismo não deve sugerir idéias como ultrapassagem ou superação.

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White Suits

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Meta-Matic no. 10

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Saw

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The Calling of Saint Anthony

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Panels from an organ case in Saint Vitus church

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Panels from an organ case in Saint Vitus church

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The Siege of Rhenen - 1499

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The crucifixion

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Saul and the Witch of Endor

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The Tree of Jesse

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Mary Magdaleine

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Forest Scene

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Monk Meditating

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Venus and Adonis

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Meleager and Atalanta

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Cephalus and Procris, 1549-1631. Designed by Karel van Mander Workshop of Francois Spiering.

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The Merry Fiddler 1623

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The Good Samaritan 1537

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The Fall of Man 1592

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The Company of Camptain Dirk Jacobsz 1588