….five months later, a cultural recharge, and one work that kind of stood out

Exactly five months ago I visited the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam to see the Bernini and Caravaggio exhibition that was to be the big crowd pleaser exhibition in the late winter and early spring months. I had little idea at the time within a month the museum (and all museums in the country) would be closing and that my next visit to one would be close to half a year later and would be a feature of my stay at home summer holiday of 2020.

So here we are then, all that time later, and I have had my first cultural recharging of batteries from a visit to the MORE museum for modern realist art in the small town of Gorssel in the Eastern part of the Netherlands. Although the museum has been open now for a number of years and is only about 60km from where I live, it was still my first visit.

Strict protocols were in place, a pre-booked entrance time, a time limit of 90 minutes in the museum, a fixed route through the collection and no doubling back on the route.  All rather  unfamiliar and not my normal all over the place style of making my way through an exhibition.  Still, times change, and yes I was glad to be there, I’ve missed the chance to look and ponder.

MORE offers a collection of Dutch realists, many from the first half of the twentieth century alongside some more contemporary work. It’s an interesting collection, much of which is painted with an intensity and level of rechnical achievement that draws you in to take a closer look. The same could certainly be said of the work of Jan Mankes. I have rarely seen such small and intense paintings, some I liked, some I didn’t and some were just simply strange!

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There was also an extensive display of the work by Jan Beutener. Figurative paintings, but ones with a strong awareness of the abstract qualities in the way his compositions are constructed. All very likable work, especially for someone like me whose own work walks a line between abstraction and figuration.

One work by Beutener should get an extra mention though. A painting from 2008, entitled With distance and featuring a face mask. It must have been included in the show as a knowing reference to the last months

Jan Beutener, With distance, 2008

The American Dream – Drentsmuseum, Assen

Is it a sign of the times, is my perception of the land across the Atlantic shifting? I was brought up on the art world of the U.S. It was a constant point of reference during my years at art school. For me it was, and still is, the abstract art that was the focus, large scale, often very lean and reduced. But the exhibition The American Dream spread across the Drentsmuseum in Assen, the Netherlands, and the museum in the northern German city of Emden, the focus is on figuration. Assen has responsibility for the twentieth century up until 1965.

The title The American Dream makes use of an often heard phrase, a dream, or an ideal perhaps. Either interpretation hints at a positive view of America, its people and way of life. From a distance I have often viewed this as maybe a bit brash, larger than life, a very ‘in your face’ view of the reality being depicted. However, and this may be being influenced by the current political and social shifts going on, the feeling I gain from seeing this exhibition is one of melancholy. This doesn’t feel like a land of hope, possibilities and of dreams, it’s just as much about suffering, disappointment and often loneliness. There seem to be figures adrift in the world, or at the very least, adrift in a sort of introspection and battles with the city, the landscape and nature.

 

Even when an image of a brash, attractive surface is to be found, in this day and age it seems only too inviting to prick through its shiny surface and ask what is the reality playing out beneath. Is it a world that we might aspire to be part of? Is it a dream or is it even a dream that is sliding into something closer to a nightmare.

Melancholy can certainly be found in the single or isolated figures that people many of the pieces but at times it seems to take on an almost David Lynchian menace, with concealed narratives seeming to be lurking in the background. A link that is never any clearer than in Catharine Murphy’s painting In the Grass. In this case the snake that is approaching from the top left. But the hose pipe takes me in this context instantly back to the opening sequence of Lynch’s Blue Velvet and it’s tale of what lies beneath the tranquility of suburban America.

Even Roy Lichtenstein’s Crying Girl seems to have become charged with a sorrow that I haven’t ever felt before!

The star turn of the exhibition is Edward Hopper’s painting Morning Sun, a painting modeled of the artist’s then 68 year old wife. It’s a beautiful, serene image, but as with many of the artist’s works there hangs a series of questions. What are the thoughts being contemplated? Has something happened? What is playing out just beyond the frame of the painting? The very same questions I find myself asking about multiple artworks in the exhibition.