A brief history of the sculpture
in the present-day Netherlands and Belgium
PAGE
4
In Dutch sculpture
the architects J.L.M. Lauweriks and K.P.C. de Bazel began an
antinaturalistic style. Their interest lay in Near Eastern, Indian,
and Chinese aesthetic sculptural principles, which they combined
with occult and masonic principles; theosophy was also an important
source. Truthfulness to materials was essential. In sculpture, Johan
Altorf (1876-1955) represented this strand. Later, Mendes da Costa
and Zijl collaborated with the school of Amsterdam architects. They
adapted the form of their sculptures to the architects’ requirements
in order to use rough materials they had not used before, such as
hard stones and tropical woods. Ancient Egyptian and Assyrian works,
with their compressed forms, proved to be the only viable models.
They also used granite and basalt for independent sculpture.
Concrete, too, was introduced in the 1920s, although the most
influential technical change was the introduction of direct carving,
following Adolf von Hildebrand’s precepts, which Dutch sculptors
started to practice after frequent periods in German workshops,
where potential employment had attracted them during the economic
crisis at home. Among the sculptors associated with the Amsterdam
school were Hendrik van den Eynde (1869-1939), Hildo Krop
(1884-1970) and John Raedecker (1885-1956).
Georges
Vantongerloo (1886-1965) was among the first to move toward abstract
sculpture, beginning about 1917. He was briefly associated with De
Stijl, but he is chiefly remembered for raising abstract
experimental sculpture on an international footing and becoming a
pioneer of modern sculpture. Abstract sculpture in Belgium was
hardly understood at the time, despite the great effort on the part
of exhibition and conference organizers and art critics. Later, in
France, where he spent the rest of his life, Van Tongerloo’s
interests changed, and he concentrated instead on open, dynamic
works.
Paul Joostens
(1889-1960) similarly started to produce abstract works from 1917,
including collages and reliefs in Cubist and Dada stylistic modes.
Oscar Jespers (1887-1970) was probably the most influential of this
group of abstract sculptors during the 1920s. For a while influenced
by Archipenko and other Cubists, although also inspired by Flemish
Expressionism and Egyptian art, he nevertheless fused these sources
into personal wholes as a result of his sense for plasticity.
Jozef Cantré
(1890-1957) had knowledge of Ossip Zadkine’s work in the Netherlands
(where he stayed during World War I), with his preferences for a
closeness to the human form. He shared Henri Puvrez’s (1893-1971)
interest in stylized shapes. Cantré and Puvrez also followed Jespers
in generally choosing the technique of direct carving, in wood or
stone.
Another
contemporary strand was that of the Animists Charles Leplae
(1903-61) and Georges Grard (1901-84) based on more classical
premises. In their move away from the fragmentation that
Expressionism implied, they followed French precedent in the work of
Aristide Maillol and Charles Despiau. Leplae certainly was in
contact with Despiau during a stay in Paris.
The great Flemish
Expressionist painter Constant Permeke (1886-1952) also tried his
hand at sculpture beginning about 1935. His sculptures directly
reflect the power and monumentality of his painting.
Surrealism also
appeared in sculpture, with Marcel Mariën (1920-93) exhibiting in
1937 Surrealist Objects and Poems. The fantastic was a
beloved subject in Belgian sculpture; adherents to its theories
included Pierre Caille (1912-96), Octave Landuyt (b. 1922) and
Carmen Dionyse (b.1921).
Such avant-garde
strands were inappropriate for the numerous war memorials that World
War I inspired; sculptors instead used the traditional prewar idioms
of monumental sculpture to fill the cities of Belgium with memorials
to war heroes. Conceived within the parameters of an architectural,
site-specific, and historical framework, the works permitted little
innovation, although the eventual outcome is still one of enormous
diversity, mainly due to the large number of sculptors involved in
these projects.
In the Netherlands
of the 1920s, German Expressionism and Die Brücke influenced such
groups as De Ploeg in Groningen and the work of the Rotterdam-based
artist Hendrik Chabot (1894-1949). Abstraction, whether in Cubist or
Constructivist forms, remained secondary, and by the 1930s, the
classical strand of such artists as Maillol and a type of expressive
realism became prevalent. Numerous memorials to World War II also
used these styles. The focus on the anatomy of the human body became
an important element of the memorials, which continued to be erected
for several decades after the war by such artists as Mari Andriessen
(1897-1979).
After World War II,
Dutch sculptors who achieved prominence had generally at least
partly trained abroad. Ossip Zadkine and to a lesser extent Jacques
Lipchitz became influential sources for a sculptor such as Wessel
Couzijn (1912-84), who together designed the landmark Rotterdam war
memorial to the merchant navy of 1951. Shinkichi Tajiri (b. 1923)
rose to prominence with his 1949 entry to the Cobra exhibition, and
his Junk sculptures (1950-51), which used recycled materials,
focussed on material culture. Other Cobra artists included Karel
Appel (b. 1921) and Lotti van der Gaag (b. 1923).
The
internationalism of the Exposition Universelle in Brussels in 1958
prompted many sculptors to discard traditional styles and to follow
(if not lead) the international trends. Assemblages made conspicuous
advancements in the 1960s. The Antwerp-based G58-Hessenhuis group
(which included Paul Van Hoeydonck (b. 1925) and Vic Gentils
(1919-97)) advocated an antipainting style with reject objects. Van
Hoeydonck increasingly made fully three-dimensional figurative
assemblages that included mechanical parts. Gentils’s experiments
with pieces of burned wood may be compared to Nouveau Réalisme; he
expanded these a few years later into large-size compositions, such
as those made from piano parts. His Chess Set (1966-67,
Middelheim, Antwerp) is an example. Pol Bury (b. 1922) added
movement to his wooden and steel works, with a weird and estranging
effect.
In the north, Joost
Baljeu (1925-91), André Volten (b. 1925), and Carel Visser (b. 1928)
produced three-dimensional abstract geometrical works inspired by De
Stijl. A knowledge of Brancusi’s work is discernible in their works
as well. The scheme of setting aside a percentage of the cost of a
building for art when constructing public edifices led some artists
such as Peter Struycken (b. 1939) to engage in sculptural projects.
In Belgium, monumental sculpture is particularly well represented by
Olivier Strebelle (b. 1927) who made a specialty out of fluid bronze
compositions.
During the 1960s
ecology became one of the main themes permeating Happenings and
other events of conceptualist artists such as Panamarenko (b. 1940)
and groups such as Mass Moving. Panamarenko continued with his
interest in technology, producing hot-air balloons, utopian
airplanes, and racing cars. Marcel Broodthaers (1924-76) adapted
forms of Nouveau Réalisme, Pop art, conceptual art, and performance
art to convey his criticism of the Belgian artistic scene. He also
rejected American Pop and satirized it in works such as Casserole
and Closed Mussels (1965), contrasting his humble possessions
such as household goods and mussel shells with mass production and
big business. Both Panamarenko and Broodthaers cultivated a
mythology of the individual whose influence continued into the
1970s.
Environment-conscious artists such as Bernd Lohaus (b. 1940) tried
to achieve a different spatial and territorial experience with
wooden beams and blocks of stone. The heterogeneity of installations
by Leo Copers (b. 1947) addressed contrasts between art and reality.
Artists often intended a combination of materials to reflect the
concept of an action or even the object itself. Richard Long thus
became a model for such artists as Carel Visser.
Since the 1980s artists have
diversified materials and concepts and have thus distanced
themselves from reality. Intuition and unexpected associations
create sculptural expressions that could convey powerful inner
feelings, in a world between abstraction and new figuration. On a
monumental scale, Guillaume Bijl (b. 1946) displayed life-size
interiors of spaces in daily life. With these avant-garde
interpretations of the sculptural medium, more traditional and
classical trends coexisted, such as the late portrait busts by
Charlotte van Pallandt (1898-1997), although they generally relied
on an older generation of sculptors because some academies
(particularly at Arnhem and The Hague) had stopped teaching
traditional sculptural techniques during the 1960s.
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