Connexion
S'inscrire
FR
Les collections
Wieteke van Zeil , Kunsthistoricus
Wieteke van Zeil: You can only see for yourself
I'm counting the days until 14 July. That Wednesday, there will finally be a substantive art program on TV again by none other than journalist, art historian and cultural critic Wieteke van Zeil (1973, The Hague). The six-part TV series Kijken op gevoel highlights a different basic emotion - anger, desire, loneliness, repulsion, despair and joy - every week and sees Wieteke sharing her personal art experience.
Most of us know her from her articles about old masters and modern mores in de Volkskrant, the weekly series 'Eye for Detail' in Volkskrant Magazine and of course her successful books Dichterbij, kunst in details (2015), Goed kijken begint met negeren: de kunst van opmerkzaamheid (2018) and Altijd iets te vinden: de kunst van het oordelen (2020). And now the TV series Kijken op gevoel has been added to that list. In it, Wieteke shows how she looks at art: from her own emotions, which she tries to link in an associative way to what she knows, but also, or perhaps precisely, to what she does not (yet) know. Because looking at art from an open point of view is what she tries to pass on to her viewers and readers. Wieteke: “I try to describe the process of looking. It doesn't help much to hear what you need to see. How cool you must find Rembrandt. You can only see for yourself.' (NRC, June 18, 2021)
What I find special about her approach is that she looks at art from 'the corner of her eye', that is to say with attention to what initially seems to be a remarkable or significant side issue. Such as the puff sleeve, as an expression of expression and control, or the arrow as an invitation or threat. She also considers, for example, why a monkey in the corner of a religious painting wears the Pope's clothes, or why a painting by Raquel van Haver features a plastic garden chair (and how to recognize plastic in paint). She adopted this approach around 2010 when she started taking photos of details in paintings with her first iPhone. She discovered that these images, once isolated from the context of the painting, are not only of art-historical value but also provide insight into the life and mores of the past and provide answers to questions such as how people lived, suffered, loved and enjoyed. From this observation she kept the credo: 'By looking with an open mind and making connections with current events, you discover more and experience more pleasure from art.'
For this collection, Wieteke highlights six works of art on the basis of the six primary emotions that are also central to the TV series Kijken op gevoel. Of course, with an eye for detail.
When you hear a song it can sometimes hit you in such an unfiltered manner that it seems like it was made especially for you. More precisely: for your feeling at that moment. Everyone can listen by feeling, and you can do it without thinking about it, whether it's joy or incomprehensible grief. Things are often slightly different with visual art; there you ask questions first. Since the eighteenth century we have been used to keeping our distance when looking at art. Intellect over feeling. Art has often also literally become a bit further removed from us: in museums. While visual art also links in the most elementary way with our emotions, expresses and evokes emotions, and makes contact with us on a very own level. As far as I'm concerned, that's the best way to approach a work of art.
That is why I prefer to reverse the order: first look by feeling, and then let the questions about artist, style, history, symbolism, iconography, material or context begin. Because that is what makes any work of art potentially current, even if it is thousands of years old, made on the other side of the world. Artists explore all the nuances and variants of the human mind in their work, and with their skill and mastery of materials sometimes manage to touch whole new layers of emotional experience in the viewer – a bit like feeling 'caught' in your secret feelings by a song. Therefore, here are six works of art about the basic emotions of anger, desire, loneliness, repulsion, despair and joy. They are in line with the themes in the 6-part television series Kijken op gevoel, which can be seen from 14 July at 10.05 pm on NTR on NPO2.
Most of us know her from her articles about old masters and modern mores in de Volkskrant, the weekly series 'Eye for Detail' in Volkskrant Magazine and of course her successful books Dichterbij, kunst in details (2015), Goed kijken begint met negeren: de kunst van opmerkzaamheid (2018) and Altijd iets te vinden: de kunst van het oordelen (2020). And now the TV series Kijken op gevoel has been added to that list. In it, Wieteke shows how she looks at art: from her own emotions, which she tries to link in an associative way to what she knows, but also, or perhaps precisely, to what she does not (yet) know. Because looking at art from an open point of view is what she tries to pass on to her viewers and readers. Wieteke: “I try to describe the process of looking. It doesn't help much to hear what you need to see. How cool you must find Rembrandt. You can only see for yourself.' (NRC, June 18, 2021)
What I find special about her approach is that she looks at art from 'the corner of her eye', that is to say with attention to what initially seems to be a remarkable or significant side issue. Such as the puff sleeve, as an expression of expression and control, or the arrow as an invitation or threat. She also considers, for example, why a monkey in the corner of a religious painting wears the Pope's clothes, or why a painting by Raquel van Haver features a plastic garden chair (and how to recognize plastic in paint). She adopted this approach around 2010 when she started taking photos of details in paintings with her first iPhone. She discovered that these images, once isolated from the context of the painting, are not only of art-historical value but also provide insight into the life and mores of the past and provide answers to questions such as how people lived, suffered, loved and enjoyed. From this observation she kept the credo: 'By looking with an open mind and making connections with current events, you discover more and experience more pleasure from art.'
For this collection, Wieteke highlights six works of art on the basis of the six primary emotions that are also central to the TV series Kijken op gevoel. Of course, with an eye for detail.
When you hear a song it can sometimes hit you in such an unfiltered manner that it seems like it was made especially for you. More precisely: for your feeling at that moment. Everyone can listen by feeling, and you can do it without thinking about it, whether it's joy or incomprehensible grief. Things are often slightly different with visual art; there you ask questions first. Since the eighteenth century we have been used to keeping our distance when looking at art. Intellect over feeling. Art has often also literally become a bit further removed from us: in museums. While visual art also links in the most elementary way with our emotions, expresses and evokes emotions, and makes contact with us on a very own level. As far as I'm concerned, that's the best way to approach a work of art.
That is why I prefer to reverse the order: first look by feeling, and then let the questions about artist, style, history, symbolism, iconography, material or context begin. Because that is what makes any work of art potentially current, even if it is thousands of years old, made on the other side of the world. Artists explore all the nuances and variants of the human mind in their work, and with their skill and mastery of materials sometimes manage to touch whole new layers of emotional experience in the viewer – a bit like feeling 'caught' in your secret feelings by a song. Therefore, here are six works of art about the basic emotions of anger, desire, loneliness, repulsion, despair and joy. They are in line with the themes in the 6-part television series Kijken op gevoel, which can be seen from 14 July at 10.05 pm on NTR on NPO2.
0 Éléments multimédias ᛫ 37 Oeuvres disponibles
7 Spectacles ᛫ 0 Points forts ᛫ 0 Recommandations
Anger
Atousa's paintings sizzle with street anger – a topic that has emerged worldwide over the past two years. Black Lives Matter, Covid, the Hong Kong protests, Belarus, the anti-government protests in Iraq and Iran; the street once again became the site for collectively tackling powerlessness. This painting has tremendous incendiary power, and I was drawn into it because Atousa uses a special trick; she makes you look over the shoulders of some figures in the front of the picture. This gives the viewer the feeling of standing in the crowd and participating. A trick that is also used on TV, but which you can already find in old paintings, such as the painting by Jan de Baen of the De Witt brothers lynched by the masses in the 17th century, where a man with a torch in his hand just in front of the place where the corpses hang. You watch along with him – and are therefore not neutral.
(Represented by Lumen Travo Galerie)
Atousa's paintings sizzle with street anger – a topic that has emerged worldwide over the past two years. Black Lives Matter, Covid, the Hong Kong protests, Belarus, the anti-government protests in Iraq and Iran; the street once again became the site for collectively tackling powerlessness. This painting has tremendous incendiary power, and I was drawn into it because Atousa uses a special trick; she makes you look over the shoulders of some figures in the front of the picture. This gives the viewer the feeling of standing in the crowd and participating. A trick that is also used on TV, but which you can already find in old paintings, such as the painting by Jan de Baen of the De Witt brothers lynched by the masses in the 17th century, where a man with a torch in his hand just in front of the place where the corpses hang. You watch along with him – and are therefore not neutral.
(Represented by Lumen Travo Galerie)
2 Éléments multimédias ᛫ 12 Oeuvres disponibles
3 Spectacles ᛫ 0 Points forts ᛫ 1 Recommandations
Loneliness
You have to stand in front of the works of Emmeline de Mooij in real life. These mattresses, with those sewn shapes, faces and other elements, are so intimate. Maybe it's the handiwork that connects us to our history as women. Her work is very relational – I have the impression that it is always about how people can relate to each other and the world. Maybe it's the mattress you instinctively want to touch that evokes thoughts of homeliness, hospitality, and being at home. This work is only indirectly about loneliness, yet the emotion of wanting to belong and being allowed, being a stranger or being known, longing and settling down in a place where you are safe in this special work, made in a material and technique that women have known for millennia and have passed on from one generation to the next.
(Represented by andriesse eyck galerie)
You have to stand in front of the works of Emmeline de Mooij in real life. These mattresses, with those sewn shapes, faces and other elements, are so intimate. Maybe it's the handiwork that connects us to our history as women. Her work is very relational – I have the impression that it is always about how people can relate to each other and the world. Maybe it's the mattress you instinctively want to touch that evokes thoughts of homeliness, hospitality, and being at home. This work is only indirectly about loneliness, yet the emotion of wanting to belong and being allowed, being a stranger or being known, longing and settling down in a place where you are safe in this special work, made in a material and technique that women have known for millennia and have passed on from one generation to the next.
(Represented by andriesse eyck galerie)
2 Éléments multimédias ᛫ 13 Oeuvres disponibles
4 Spectacles ᛫ 0 Points forts ᛫ 3 Recommandations
Repulsion
This video hit me like a sledgehammer when I saw it in a museum. Slowly the objects pass by – personal things, notes, photos, clothes. Prayer cloths, candlesticks, shoes, broken picture frames, paper receipts. Have they been thrown away? Did someone get rid of them from someone else? It just keeps coming, and you get a stronger sense that something is wrong. Somehow the images feel more and more violent, and scarier; as if to avert your gaze. Tashlikh (Cast off) is inspired by great mass murders; the Holocaust, the Armenian genocide, massacres in Eritrea and Sudan. Gradually you get the impression that you are seeing how people are being stripped of their humanity. Tashlikh also refers to a Jewish ritual to expiate one's sins by throwing food and belongings into a river. I don't know why, but the inherent violence of this video - and this still of it - makes it very hard to watch. An intrusive, unexpected way to feel disgust – the fear that something is personal and close, and the physical tendency to throw it off. The feeling of a free fall makes watching an extra physical experience.
(Represented by Annet Gelink Gallery)
This video hit me like a sledgehammer when I saw it in a museum. Slowly the objects pass by – personal things, notes, photos, clothes. Prayer cloths, candlesticks, shoes, broken picture frames, paper receipts. Have they been thrown away? Did someone get rid of them from someone else? It just keeps coming, and you get a stronger sense that something is wrong. Somehow the images feel more and more violent, and scarier; as if to avert your gaze. Tashlikh (Cast off) is inspired by great mass murders; the Holocaust, the Armenian genocide, massacres in Eritrea and Sudan. Gradually you get the impression that you are seeing how people are being stripped of their humanity. Tashlikh also refers to a Jewish ritual to expiate one's sins by throwing food and belongings into a river. I don't know why, but the inherent violence of this video - and this still of it - makes it very hard to watch. An intrusive, unexpected way to feel disgust – the fear that something is personal and close, and the physical tendency to throw it off. The feeling of a free fall makes watching an extra physical experience.
(Represented by Annet Gelink Gallery)
3 Éléments multimédias ᛫ 16 Oeuvres disponibles
12 Spectacles ᛫ 0 Points forts ᛫ 0 Recommandations
Despair
Very often feelings are united in art – hope and despair, fear and relief, sadness and longing. Emotions are as unpredictable as can be. As children we learn to suppress them – otherwise it is so difficult to live together – and for the rest of your life they find a way out through peep holes. Sometimes such a hole is a work of art. Here Anne Wenzel combines great despair – about violence and oppression against women – with enormous unyielding power. This work is violent, destructive, and born of despair. Yet, it manifests itself in the rock-hard material as indestructible, as a new hero bust, almost like a liberation. Her material and working method are powerful, she refers to age-old traditions. But she breaks them out, almost literally tears out. This image contains and acknowledges the emotion of despair, but at the same time shows the strength and resilience that despair can produce.
(Represented by AKINCI)
Very often feelings are united in art – hope and despair, fear and relief, sadness and longing. Emotions are as unpredictable as can be. As children we learn to suppress them – otherwise it is so difficult to live together – and for the rest of your life they find a way out through peep holes. Sometimes such a hole is a work of art. Here Anne Wenzel combines great despair – about violence and oppression against women – with enormous unyielding power. This work is violent, destructive, and born of despair. Yet, it manifests itself in the rock-hard material as indestructible, as a new hero bust, almost like a liberation. Her material and working method are powerful, she refers to age-old traditions. But she breaks them out, almost literally tears out. This image contains and acknowledges the emotion of despair, but at the same time shows the strength and resilience that despair can produce.
(Represented by AKINCI)
3 Éléments multimédias ᛫ 3 Oeuvres disponibles
1 Spectacles ᛫ 0 Points forts ᛫ 2 Recommandations
Joy
Art is playing, expanding, searching, merging, drawing up rules and breaking them again. Delta invented his own game in the 1980s as a graffiti writer – nobody worked like him. The combination of letters and images, in Arab and Chinese culture much more part of traditions as here, became his game, but with completely new forms. There is something industrial about it, something that is reminiscent of the heroes in American comics, of Transformers and robots, and at the same time deeply rooted in Dutch formalism, from Escher to Mondriaan, and Van Saenredam to Berlage and Vermeer. Just like in the old days along the railway line, when you see Delta's work you still get the feeling that it is growing, playing, searching, and can become bigger over time. It is an ode to visual language and to changeability, and pure fun.
(Represented by Galerie Ron Mandos)
Art is playing, expanding, searching, merging, drawing up rules and breaking them again. Delta invented his own game in the 1980s as a graffiti writer – nobody worked like him. The combination of letters and images, in Arab and Chinese culture much more part of traditions as here, became his game, but with completely new forms. There is something industrial about it, something that is reminiscent of the heroes in American comics, of Transformers and robots, and at the same time deeply rooted in Dutch formalism, from Escher to Mondriaan, and Van Saenredam to Berlage and Vermeer. Just like in the old days along the railway line, when you see Delta's work you still get the feeling that it is growing, playing, searching, and can become bigger over time. It is an ode to visual language and to changeability, and pure fun.
(Represented by Galerie Ron Mandos)