Advertising and reconstruction
With a documentary section, compiled by Herbert Mattie, the exhibition outlined how the history of murals in Rotterdam began with pre-war advertising and cinema painters. They often gave the public its first taste of erotically-tinted advertising with their maxim ’mooi van verre’ (beautiful from afar). During the war years an attempt was made to cheer up the city centre by decorating the temporary shops with paintings. The post-war reconstruction years are summarised in the E 55 manifestation, a fair meant to boost new energy in all its manifestations. Artists were commissioned to paint the interior walls of the fair building, while Karel Appel designed the exterior 100-meter long Energy Wall.
Activism and beautification
The seventies were characterised by a split. One side comprised artists who considered the outside walls pre-eminently suitable for declaring their dissatisfaction with politics and especially the poor housing conditions. This group sympathised with the political refugees from Chile in Rotterdam, who worked in the Latin-American tradition of political wall paintings. The Chilean Monument on the station square was a well-known example of their engagement: for years the paintings by the Luis Corvalan Brigade were a first activist greeting to people visiting the city.
In contrast to the politically engaged artists, other artists wanted to beautify the city. With a scholarship from the Ministry of Culture, the artist Cor Kraat was sent to the United States to collect examples. This was the origin of the ’Townpainting’ phenomenon for Rotterdam. The Rotterdamse Kunst Stichting (RKS) commissioned many wall paintings, but few have survived.
New commissions for TENT
Today paintings in the public domain become embroiled in a mortal battle of images with other manifestations of visual information. With nine, new, monumental works adorning the TENT walls, the second part of this double exhibition explored how the visual arts respond to these changes. Weighty ideologies have disappeared and perhaps the contemporary globalised context can no longer be captured in a univocal visual image. The participating artists translate their engagement into personal worlds. They apply an imagery that is metaphorical, enigmatic and stratified, and in this way the complexity of reality hits close to home. Beyond the documentary observation, away from the language of mass media they opt for artistic positions that have a social undertone.
The work of Jan van de Pavert and Olphaert den Otter is characterised by a profound interest in art history and in the power of ideological symbols. The realistic group tableaux by Van de Pavert often comprise social commentary without being moralistic. Olphaert den Otter paints humble accommodation, which is sometimes reminiscent of homeless people’s lodgings, and that has a long tradition in the art of religious painting.
The painters Simon Schrikker and Bima Engels find their voice in an expressionistic syntax. The paintings by Schrikker depict anonymous dogs, often captured in a wild, aggressive or desperate movement. With large gestures, using bright colours, Engels paints monumental sentinels whose tasks it seems is to protect the world from the imagination.
With her detailed drawings of exotic creatures Freya Wisman composes a portrait of social group behaviour. The titles of her work frequently form a second layer, they function as commentary on, or reference to, the interaction of the groups.
In the works of Bas Zoontjens and Ewoud van Rijn desolate habitats represent a stage in a world that seems to have lost its natural aspects: Zoontjens incorporates organic references in architectural structures. Geometric shapes float through a silent space. The drawings, watercolours and paintings by Ewoud van Rijn seem to be related to surreal art and sometimes even to the cartoon.
In her introvert black-and-white photographs and billboards, Lidwien van de Ven is preoccupied with ethical issues and she queries what a visual image can and cannot convey, how the visible relates to the invisible. She recently visited places in the Middle East that play a role in current political conflicts.
The eclectic, chaotic and apparently incoherent works by the Antistrot collective reflect the flood of images, impressions and temptations to which we are daily exposed. Precisely by embracing the consumer society in its entirety, they endeavour to expose the links that have become invisible in our reality.