| Next door to each other in Amsterdam are two museums, the Stedelijk Museum and the Van Gogh Museum. They are very different beasts. Their differences run much deeper than the obvious fact that the Van Gogh concentrates on the late 19th Century and mainly on one artist while the Stedelijk concentrates on the 20th Century and attempts to cover all of Western Art. If this summer's exhibitions were any measure of their philosophies they seem to operate as almost polar opposites. |
| Being the largest tourist attraction in Amsterdam and working against the prevalent wild man myths concerning Van Gogh (that many casual viewers of art bring along with them,) the Van Gogh Museum is in a difficult position. Is it possible for the museum to keep its audience, the size of which helps justify their current expansion, yet present Van Gogh as an intelligent, contemplative artist? |
| Through the thoughtful manner in which the museum organizes and displays artwork the viewer is not only able to follow Van Gogh's ideas as they progress through his lifetime but also to make the necessary links to other artists' works of that period and discover some of the urgency and excitement the works must have possessed at the time they were made. By placing Van Gogh's artworks into different contexts and groupings the museum demonstrates that far from being a near lunatic with paint, Van Gogh developed his art in much the same manner and had many of the same goals as did his contemporaries. Like many other 19th century artists Van Gogh made repeated references to existing artworks and compositions, especially Millet. And like Manet and Monet he was interested in and influenced by Japanese prints. In fact, Van Gogh made work directly based on these prints. Also, like other of his contemporaries (Seurat for example) his fundamental way of seeing was originally formed through drawing--hundreds of delicate studies of the figure and intricate landscapes. |
| In addition, Van Gogh appears to have been an extremely observant, quick learner. Upon moving to Paris in 1886 he discovered a style of painting (now called Impressionism) that was vastly different from his own. Realizing that what he had found was contemporary painting he abandoned his previous style(which he had, until this point, thought was contemporary) and within a year and a half learned, not how to copy this style, but to make it his own. |
| This is not to say that the facts surrounding Van Gogh's mental illness did not play an important role in the development of his style or are not part of the content of his work. And the museum does not shy away from this topic. Rather it approaches it by presenting an artist whose quest is not |
| to document his life (and illness) but to produce artworks of beauty and originality, the twin points on which late 19th century art turns. And, it is in viewing the record of this obsessive quest (the over four hundred drawings and two hundred paintings in the museum's collection) that the life, illness and eventual madness of Van Gogh are revealed. |
| An early painting by Van Gogh that was on display lays out, rather vividly, the two worlds he attempted to negotiate. In this painting we see a table upon which a huge bible, his father's, lies open on an equally impressive wooden stand while next to it, looking as if it was just tossed there, is a novel by Emile Zola. |
| Next door at the Stedelijk Museum the director, Rudi Fuchs, and the curatorial staff installed an exhibition of their permanent collection entitled Around Europe. The objective of the show, as stated in a taped interview continuously playing during the run of the show and a portion of which is published in the museum's Bulletin should have produced an interesting exhibition: "Since the arrival of American art in Europe, here at the Stedelijk we have always allowed our outlook to be influenced by the phenomenon of American art. It seemed that the time was ripe to take a look for once at precisely what sort of character European art has had in this century." But, under this lofty banner, several very reactionary agendas revealed themselves. |
| First, when Fuchs speaks about art he is talking almost solely about painting. Of the thirty rooms that comprised the exhibition only about five (generally the very smallest) contained any photography, let alone video. And the photography that was exhibited, with the exception of Jan Dibbets,tended to be by documentary style photographers like Robert Doisneau and Tony Ray-Jones. Glaringly absent was a whole list of artists who have been using photography during the past two or three decades towards a different end. Artists like Bernd and Hilla Becher, Victor Burgin, Gilbert & George, Annette Messager, Sophie Calle and Christian Boltanski to name just a few. The only nod towards installation art or site specific work was to have Sigmar Polke paint a series of large works that hung around the main stairwell. |
| In addition, the exhibition ignored virtually the entire history of conceptual art in Europe (with the exception of Dibbets and Ger Van Elk). Where was work by Giovanni Anselmo, Art & Language, Lothar Baumgarten, Marcel Broodthaers, Daniel Buren, André Cadere, Hanne Darboven, Richard Long, Blinky Palermo, Giulio Paolini, or Niele Toroni?You would have thought at the very least Bas Van Ader could have been included as a nod towards the locals. |
| Worse yet, even if I were to agree with the curators and say that "nothing of importance happened outside painting in Europe during this century," I would still have left the show thinking it was ill-conceived. Maybe even more so given the way the show was organized and installed. For somehow, along with American art, Fuchs also decided to get rid of the idea of placing a work of art in a context that might help reveal the artwork's meaning, not something I ever thought of as particularly American. In its place the museum staff installed the paintings according to physical similarities ("Untitled," 1996 a work by Robert Zandvliet is hung near Roger Raveel's "This is a Painting of R. R.'s Bathroom, not P. M.'s," 1953, presumably because they both contain large areas of white near the middle of the canvas). This hodgepodge strategy was made even more confusing by placing all titles, dates and artists' names near the corners of the rooms and thus leaving one with only the formal aspects of the paintings to compare. |
| This by-chance strategy does not provide the viewer with the information needed to understand this work. What is the likelihood that a viewer encountering a Mondrian in the same room with a Van Gogh and a Chagall will have any idea of Mondrian's dream of changing culture through his work. Or to demonstrate, as this exhibition did, that abstract painting was made at various times during this century tells us little about the artwork or its relationship to culture at large. To demonstrate, as this exhibition did not, that the majority of artists working in Paris, then the center of the artworld, turned dramatically away from abstract painting in around 1916 tells us a lot. |
| Anyone who visited this exhibition without a thorough understanding of 20th century art history might just as well arrived on the last spaceship from Mars. For this installation could not possibly have helped viewers understand these works, their meanings or importance. One was left with a series of overlapping formal patterns, one blending into the other. The most disturbing aspect for me is that even having seen the show, taken notes, listened to the tape, read the Bulletin and studied the room by room check list I had trouble recalling what many of the specific artworks even looked like from out of the haze created by the mix and match blandness of the installation. |
| Unfortunately what Douglas Crimp wrote about Rudi Fuchs in relation to his organization of Documenta 7 in 1982 holds true today. He continues "to manipulate the individual works of art in conformity with his inflated self-image as master artist of the exhibition. Whether the participating artists intended it or not, Fuchs would endeavor |
| to ensure that their works would in no |
| way reflect on their environment: the world around them, customs and architecture, |
| politics and cooking."1 |
| 1. Crimp, Douglas, "The Art of Exhibition," October, |
| no. 30, Fall 1984. |
