T.J. Donovan / Shel Silverstein

Shel Silverstein

Now Here's My Plan: A Book of Futilities
1960

published by Simon and Schuster

My contribution is the wonderful Shel Silverstein (1930–1999). Silverstein was an American poet, singer-songwriter, cartoonist, screenwriter and author of children's books. Shel Silverstein inspired me at a very young age and shall continue to do so forever. My wife and I read Silverstein’s books to our daughter Lily every night before she closes her eyes. Silverstein speaks to both the young and the old, and most often simultaneously. He reminds us all of what’s at stake. He helps us to guide our children toward a life of dreaming, loving and standing up for what they believe in, all the while reminding us of these virtues we so often forget.

T.J. Donovan 2013

T.J. Donovan (US)

Untitled

2013

oil on canvas

123,2 x 122 x 5 cm (48.5 x 48 x 2 inches)

www.tjdonovanart.com

T.J. Donovan and his daughter Lily, Boston, MA, 2009

René Korten / Fra Angelico

Fra Angelico

The Mocking of Christ

1440-41
fresco in the convent of San Marco, Florence

187 x 151 cm

When I first saw the frescoes of Fra Angelico in the convent of San Marco in Florence many years ago, they made a big impression on me. Fra Angelico painted a scene of the life of Christ in each of the monk’s cells, enabling the praying monk to envision the scene and contemplate about it in his private space.
Especially this fresco of The Mocking of Christ in cell 7 had an extraordinary impact on me. The painting depicts fragmentary details of Christ's tormentors. The space is rendered with clarity and coherence that accentuates the strangeness of the mocking symbols suspended in air against a brightly colored plane. Christ’s humiliations of spitting, slapping and beating are not shown in their full violence in a complex narrative work, but they are shown as fragments, reduced to a series of symbols. The beautiful color scheme of the fresco and the clarity and complexity of these gestures struck me and had a big influence.
René Korten, 2013

 
René Korten (NL)

Dub 1, Living Door

2011
acrylic, graphite, charcoal on mdf

120 x 154 cm 
www.renekorten.nl

Michael de Kok / Mark Rothko

Mark Rothko

No. 14

1960
oil on canvas

290,8 x 268,3 cm
collection SFMOMA

His mature works consist of two or three diffuse rectangles of saturated color. Their effect is one of luminosity and floating in an indefinable space. Rothko often worked on a large scale, seeking to envelop the viewer in an experience of intimacy and spiritual transcendence.

Source: sfmoma.org

Michael de Kok

Playground 

2013  
oil on linnen

150 x 170 cm 

www.michaeldekok.com

Elka Oudenampsen / Piet Mondriaan

Piet Mondriaan
Compositie met rood, blauw en geel
1930
oil on canvas
52 x 52 cm

There are many examples of Egyptian art, Greek art and paintings from the Renaissance period that I like to look at. And there are several artists from our art history that I love, such as Mondriaan. I admire the way he formed his art and his environment by his beliefs. By connecting his theosophical ideas with the fragmented reality around him, he developed his own visual language. He was a builder. Mondriaans search to transform his individual experience to universal pictures as well as his development of displaying the physical reality to that of abstraction, continues to inspire me.

"I construct lines and color combinations on a flat surface, in order to express general beauty with the utmost awareness. Nature (or, that which I see) inspires me, puts me, as with any painter, in an emotional state so that an urge comes about to make something, but I want to come as close as possible to the truth and abstract everything from that, until I reach the foundation (still just an external foundation!) of things… I believe it is possible that, through horizontal and vertical lines constructed with awareness, but not with calculation, led by high intuition, and brought to harmony and rhythm, these basic forms of beauty, supplemented if necessary by other direct lines or curves, can become a work of art, as strong as it is true."

"Van Doesburg at Tate Modern" by Jackie Wullschlager, published 2010/6/2 from a letter he wrote to H.P. Bremmer in 1914.

Elka Oudenampsen
Personage dat onzichtbaar in een Tijdschrift leeft
2013
120 x 95 cm
www.elkaoudenampsen.nl

Anthony Cudahy / Ingmar Bergman

 

Ingmar Bergman

film Persona

1966

Anthony Cudahy (US)

Untitled

Oil on Canvas

35,6 x 48,3 cm

www.anthonycudahy.com

I think I could turn myself into you. If I made a real effort. I mean inside. You could turn yourself into me just like that.

From film Persona 

Toon Teeken / Broodthaers-El Greco-Van der Weyden

Marcel Broodthaers

Langage de fleurs

1965

wood, paint, plastic

30 cm diameter

El Greco

Laocoön

1608-1614

oil on linen

142 x 193 cm

Rogier van der Weyden

Deposition

ca. 1435-1440

oil on oak panel

220 x 262 cm

In the course of time I have been influenced by different artists from different disciplines: El Greco, Giacometti, Manet, Bonnard, Carpaccio, all the Italian Renaissance, Pierre Boulez, De Chirico, Rothko, Elliott Carter, Hanne Darboven, Teresa de Keersemaeker, Rogier van der Weyden, Monteverdi, Marcel Proust, Marcel Broodthaers, Helmut Lachenmann and many others. I deliberately do not mention them in chronological order. Besides philosophy, my travels in West Afrika, a lot of contemporary music and the daily practice of life, especially El Greco and Marcel Broodthaers have been decisive. From the latter I saw a retrospective in Brussels and there I recognized language as image and image as language. Language as unlimited generator of meaning that also swallows up meaning. Maybe I also saw that very early in El Greco, whose free hand of painting makes the picture appear as readable calligraphy in an abstract, relatively flat space. Early on I called him the first cubist. But I guess the best work I've ever seen is the Deposition by Rogier van der Weyden at the Museo del Prado in Madrid.

Toon Teeken 2013

 

Toon Teeken (NL)

Being a statue

2011

oil on linen

160 x 200 cm

www.toonteeken.com

Simon Schrikker / Herman Kruyder

Herman Kruyder
De Hond
1934
oil on linen
110 x 122 cm


Despite the rather stylized way of painting it has a raw edge. This could of course be related to the psychological state of the painter. One year after making this painting the painter dies as a result of a previous suicide attempt. Of course, you do not need to know this as a viewer. I think it's a very exciting, dark painting, even without knowing this story. The colors, the bone, the dog with a rope around his neck and his genitals visible to the viewer take you back to the farmyard where Herman and his wife lived in isolation. Over the years I often have been looking at this painting in the Boijmans.

Of course my work is not a literal copy of this work, and as an artist I have many examples. Too much to list here. At the academy I wasn't occupied with figurative painting. In fact I was more interested in paint and its functioning. I still love that, I can sit in my studio for days muddling with paint without anything solid coming out. When I came up with a painting of a deer in a swamp of paint during my follow-up study, it was Emo Verkerk who pointed me to this work of Herman Kruyder. Spontaneously I changed the deer into a Rotweiller. I have the feeling that figurative painting is somewhat out of favour lately. One critic recently called it 'Deer Art'. However, using the subject-matter of the dog, I still think it's very exciting time and time again to seek this specific point where something unexpected happens, with the image, the technique and of course with the viewer. 

Simon Schrikker 2013

Simon Schrikker
untitled
2010
oil on linen
210 x 250 cm
www.simonschrikker.com