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Weekly Residuum 437 - June 2016 A
© text Koen Nieuwendijk
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| Save the Kunst(Rai) XIII |
| Empty booth |
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“Single-minded Selection Committee saves KunstRai” Where : KunstRai art fair, Amsterdam When : 1 to 5 June 2016 inclusive What : Newly appointed Selection Committee bars participation by Lieve Hemel Gallery Why : Non-innovative, outdated, does not qualify as contemporary art This is the motto using which KunstRai will be presenting itself in 2016: “KunstRai sets itself apart as a widely oriented art fair that operates a contemporary approach to art: a deliberate choice that fits in with modern times, characterised as these are by cross-overs, diversity, tolerance and integration.” The KunstRai organisers upon the request of selected art galleries have appointed a Committee made up of participants in the art fair, to assist the executive board with advice in its selection of exhibitors. Their pursuits have culminated in ensuring that Lieve Hemel Gallery should be barred from participating in this year’s fair, for reasons which they have phrased as follows: First, the gallery has been branded “non-innovative” (“next to no diversity over time in its offering”, “not particularly pioneering”) while its exhibition programme has been labelled “outdated”. According to the Committee the kind of work the gallery presents “is alien to the realms of contemporary art and has no business being showcased at the KunstRai art fair”. The Committee as part of the drive towards revamping KunstRai and overhauling and rejuvenating the level has advised not to invite Lieve Hemel without discussing the quality of the gallery’s individual artists. Second, the number of artists which the gallery intends to showcase has been found to be excessive, with the Committee reckoning that the gallery’s booth would come to resemble ‘a supersized, super-traditional showroom stuffed with merchandise of the trite variety’. Lieve Hemel Gallery cannot but congratulate the Committee on the display of bravery its members have shown. Clearly Lieve Hemel Gallery must have been delusional to even think that it would make the cut and be admitted as a KunstRai participant. Lieve Hemel Gallery appreciates that it would have been a disgrace to the entire visual arts community in the Netherlands had it succeeded in its endeavour. Lieve Hemel Gallery has picked up on the sheer cleverness and sagacity of the Committee’s words and has nothing but praise for the alacrity with which the Committee has assumed its responsibility. The Committee has accidentally produced proof of the superiority of some gallery owners over others, as two entirely different worlds that anyone with an ounce of common sense will understand should never be allowed to meet as this would be bad news for the entire country and out-and-out degrading in a cultural sense. Praise be indeed now that the KunstRai art fair, and the immediate future of all that is cultural in the Netherlands with it, has so valiantly been saved from obliteration. This should be the stage where you, the reader, should be starting to feel somewhat uncomfortable – and quite rightly so. Although I have in the best possible faith responded to the arguments put forward by my Selection Committee peers (see annex), I fear that in doing so I have barely if at all managed to exceed the level of oh-yes-he-has-oh-no-he-hasn’t. You may find it hard to believe, but I actually feel that I understand where my Selection Committee peers are coming from and hope that I have managed to reign in my initial fury to a sufficient extent as to ensure that my rebuttal should not substantially hinge upon offensiveness. I had the idea in my initial flush of anger to call for a Grand Revival aimed at blowing the whistle on all that had gone wrong in the world of the visual arts. Once I had calmed down, I realised that this approach was probably not going to get me anywhere, destined as it was to get bogged down in bitterness and lack of understanding. I then started looking for an angle of incidence that would enable me to go to the heart of the problem in a non-fault-finding manner … only to fail. My next step was to start contemplating whether I would be able to formulate what it was that I wanted to say without allowing myself to be side-tracked by dissident views. My dearest wish is to make the world appreciate and accept that what drives my artists is an impalpable passion that is virtually if not entirely the same as that of the any avant-garde artist you’d care to mention. I felt this approach was getting me somewhere, except that it made me wonder why it was that I kept insisting on explaining to the experts that expounding on the motivation of my artists was an all but unachievable challenge, not because their imagery lacked substance but for the opposite reason of their imagery being a perfect fit for the webbing of the visual, a something that needs no words to communicate its power of persuasion to the onlooker. It would be unfortunate if this were interpreted as my downplaying the emphasis on elaboration as the main gateway to the actual visual, because that is certainly not how I have intended it. To cut a long story short, I have shelved my plans for a Grand Revival. One thing my ponderings have yielded is a list of topics which I hope will inspire up and coming art historians to reflect on the true face of contemporary art in which due allowances will also be made for realism and the position it commands. All this recapitulating is inadvertently making me wonder what the dickens I think I’m doing. I can’t help thinking that I am undermining my own arguments by refraining from letting my Selection Committee peers “have it”. After all, the crux of the matter is who the people at the heart of all of this are, bearing in mind that I see more of the pall-bearer than of the bearer of ideas in my Selection Committee peers. Nevertheless I feel that I am getting ever closer to the nub of the issue. It’s not art itself, it’s their entourage, the artistic periphery if you like. And yet there are the obvious exceptions. As luck would have it (in so far as luck had anything to do with it) I found myself engrossed in an interview with Taco Dibbits, the newly appointed CEO of the Rijksmuseum, who talked among other things about Kapoor and Rembrandt, saying that “Art evokes emotions of bliss, and sometimes of solace”. It’s words like these that I find heart-warming, for this is an example of where beauty can be found – common or garden variety beauty, no frills, no nonsense. (I was about to delete the last sentence because taken literally it represents an injustice to the unfathomable profundity achieved by certain artists in the process, but decided to leave it in as the very words also touch on the simplicity of solace as another experience of unfathomable profundity that does not necessarily rely on words. It is precisely these values that I have been looking for in contemporary painting for almost 48 years.) It is these values that my fellow gallery owners cum Selection Committee members are downgrading to something pedestrian that is liable for censorship or deployable as a reason for exclusion. It is unfortunate that there are more of their ilk. As for the censorship, this can be implemented in covert ways including by not mentioning it, as is common practice at some arts editors’ offices. I have nothing against the many other values that are so popular these days, such as social relevance and innovative drive, but it pains me to see them reduced to an inexorable mantra forced upon us by way of an unconditional dogma, and not by the artists themselves but by their periphery. No Grand Revival, I decided six paragraphs higher up. I may change my mind again now that I’ve found my target audience. Koen Nieuwendijk. Annex |
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27 May 2016 Dear Members of the “KunstRai” Selection Committee, It came as something of a bombshell to me when the organisers of the fair recently informed me that my application for this year’s edition of KunstRai had been turned down. I remember as if it were yesterday my 1983 rejection as a participant in Art ‘83, against which decision together with Adriaan van der Have I staged a protest right on the doorstep of the New Church (the then exhibition venue), as something, I hasten to add, I have no intention of repeating this year. It came to a falling-out between the organisers and three gallery owners – Asselijn’s Bram Volkers, Wetering Galerie’s Michiel Hennus and Rob Jurka – who disagreed with the selection policy, feeling as they did that the art fair should embrace a greater variety of styles than just those classified as “modern movements”. Their intervention was successful in that one year later galleries such as Mokum and Petit, and Lieve Hemel as well, were welcomed into the fold. It was owing to their campaign that I came to believe that personal preference after all was not the be-all-and-end-all criterion in the art world either. Your assessment of applications, I have been fascinated to read, is anchored in the following vision: “KunstRai sets itself apart as a widely oriented art fair that operates a contemporary approach to art: a deliberate choice that fits in with modern times, characterised as these are by cross-overs, diversity, tolerance and integration.” Nothing but confirmation of my confidence so far … until we get to your interpretation of the above vision, which is where you abruptly stop making sense to me. You have sized me up using a handful of criteria all of which are extraneous, with the exception, that it, of the spectacularly offensive “is alien to the realms of contemporary art”. I feel it’s only right that I should respond. “Non-innovative” “Innovative” as an adjective has been reduced to a sad cliché that has come to be widely, and usually inappropriately, used throughout society. Although it is the kind of word I prefer to steer clear of for this very reason, all the same I regard Alex de Vrede’s still lifes as stunningly original. Or could that have been what you were getting at? “Next to no diversity over time in its offering” It is just about conceivable to me that being conditioned to non-stop (attempts at) change – with all due respect, I should add – may go hand in hand with the notion that innovation is the result of a conscious process. What I fail to understand, however, is why you should snub the same group of artists you have seen me present year in, year out, knowing as you do that the specific techniques they use make their works distinctly time-consuming. It’s nothing more than a difference in dynamics, after all. Or is that something that makes you feel uncomfortable? Do you think it might be harmful? Haven’t you ever heard of fervour and restraint not being mutually exclusive? And wasn’t it you who brought up diversity in the first place? “Outdated exhibition programme” “Outdated” as a concept is a fashion loanword that says more about the perception of the user than about anyone or anything else. The visual arts, after all, primarily represent an autonomous expression that does not come with a “best before” date and cannot therefore become outdated, not even where the choice in question has been deliberately made the way this is done by the protagonists of postmodernism. “Is alien to the realms of contemporary art” The implied meaning of this statement is that contemporary art must be innovative, which causes the obsession with innovation to mould itself into an artistic calling. What do you think that implies about how you see the “liberal arts”? And yet I have to believe notwithstanding the blatant offensiveness of your qualification that as members of the Selection Committee you must have your hearts in roughly the right place. The only explanation I can come up with for your unpleasant behaviour is that you have somehow singled me out as posing a hazard to the exhibition, to the arts, to the world at large. All I can do is wonder why. “Because we are in the process of changing the presentation of KunstRai and are keen to revamp and rejuvenate the level” How, I ask you, does this not imply that we are heading for the same strict and dogmatic KunstRai we’ve been treated to more than once during the past few decades? Or is it me taking it the wrong way? And how for that matter does one “”revamp” and “rejuvenate” a level? Is this your not-so-subtle way of telling me that I am too old and if so, is the age difference between myself and some of the members of your esteemed Selection Committee really that great? “Without judging the quality of the individual artists in the process” What this actually means is that it is for idiomatic reasons – i.e. the realistic painting style – that you are dismissing the gallery. “Second, it is your opinion that the number of artists whose works are up for presentation is excessive, it being your fear that the gallery’s booth would come to resemble ‘a supersized, super-traditional showroom stuffed with merchandise of the trite variety’.” I must admit that you actually have a point here, touching as you have on a dilemma that I feel I’ve been on the horns of for a very long time. I entertain long-standing professional partnerships with the majority of my artists and feel almost obligated to showcase a representative collection for each of my 15 or so artists whenever I participate in a fair, which inevitably involves a bit of jostling for space between the exhibits. Given the modest size of the envisaged booth I had already decided anyway to abandon the above principle for the occasion. Moreover I’ve always had a predilection for switching between choc-a-bloc and sparse, much like I did in April of this year at the Art Breda fair (which I assume at least a few members of your esteemed Committee must have graced with their presence). My sole reason for including all my artists’ names on the application form was that I hadn’t yet made my definitive selection, but was loath at the same time to spring an unannounced artist upon you. In this sense my enumeration was simply the menu I would be having to choose from. I take offence to your use of the word “merchandise”, which you have clearly used in a derogatory sense. All my artists are passionate, honourable and hard-working professionals who cherish their independence and never shy away from taking risks, added to which not nearly all of them can bask in the glow of having their work sell like hotcakes, as the word “merchandise” intimates. I’ll leave it at this where your oddly disparaging words are concerned, but not without pointing out that I consider your attempted dismissal of me as a crafty salesman who doesn’t miss a trade fair if he can help it in his never-ending quest to foist his must-haves on an unsuspecting crowd as out of all proportion. After all, isn’t it every gallery owner’s duty to maximise sales on behalf of his or her artists, whose bread and butter hangs in the balance? And yes, tradition makes itself felt every now and again. It is what culture itself is steeped in. Even the innovation drive you keep banging on about has been a tradition for dozens of years. But what is it that you find so offensive about any of this? You have possibly juxtaposed “them”, the true modernists with their booths filled with avant-garde works who keep pushing the envelope, taking risks and settling for meagre results, with the “supersized, super-traditional showroom stuffed with merchandise of the trite variety’. All that is left for me to do is wonder what it will take to clear up such a persistent misunderstanding. I had actually been looking forward to participating in the KunstRai art fair as the perfect opportunity for achieving the setting the right tone using minimal resources. My plans moreover involved my 22-year old daughter, who in the “grand scheme of things” should in the not too immediate future be taking over from me as head of the gallery. Nothing I do meets with your approval, it seems, as you have decided I must be an abhorrent and unscrupulously cunning individual. I would urge you to wake up and smell the coffee. We all know that it is next to impossible to achieve anything at all in the Dutch art scene, and so any gallery owner who – powered on by his or her own idealism – succeeds in getting somewhere, anywhere at all, has my deepest admiration. This is precisely why I have never stopped telling myself that you, my Selection Committee peers, are well-intentioned but due to your distorted views – not just of me but of a pretty hefty slice of the art world as such – feel threatened and have adopted the attack-is-the-best-defence attitude in response. As for me, I am wrestling with the same dilemmas. I too am relentless in my idealism, and this is precisely why I would urge you to shift your focus from dissension to dialogue. Outside your own subculture your current attitude is tainting the artistic image. The time may come when sociologists and art historians will subject you to the rack and characterise you as dogmatic, arrogant and dictatorial. With the recent exhibition of Jheronimus Bosch in mind, I would in fact not be surprised at all if you ended up branded a bunch of latter-day witch hunters. Don’t let it get this far. Now is the time to turn the tide and re-humanise yourselves. Koen Nieuwendijk. (Translation Tekstwerk, Amsterdam) |