How to react to all that is happening in the world right now… Nowhere I see painters react in a valuable way to the latest events. And nobody asks the question why painters do not react, at least, nobody in my surroundings. Everybody is happy and on vacation…

Me too, it seems I just continue on the way I have been working.

Did my heroes react in their days? The first one I think of is Goya, his last series of paintings and the series of the disasters of war. There is the 'Guernica' of Picasso... I admire Max Beckmann very much and love this painting.

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And there are the etchings of Otto Dix.

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Another hero of mine reacted in a different way to the events. Rembrandt’s late series of self-portraits show a man who has compassion and has surrendered and accepted his fate.

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The ‘human condition’… That is what I am after, if I am after something. I think of Francis Bacon… For years I painted canvases with exclusively that sort of subject.

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'Spit and rain', 1989.

I try to integrate (give it a place) the madness that is present in all of us in my works (not always). Why do people kill without any remorse? I think to have seen, that that emotion is not even very far away in myself either. Not something to be proud of…

And there is the indifference…

And our love to give the violence a name foreign to us. It’s the ones that have other aims than we have. We are ok...

I divide my time between works in the ‘old’ style (now mostly bulls) and the flower paintings.

Paintings can also give relief.

I do worry. This worry with what I read in the papers is quite abstract. We are used to seeing so much misery.

But around me not all is pink and happy either. A dear friend of mine is in a very bad place and I cannot stop thinking about it. It is very present in my everyday thoughts. What do I do with that?

There is the story of Picasso painting the Guernica with Dora Maar and Maria Teresa Walter fighting over him in the studio and him using that as an inspitration for the painting...

Where do I stand? I should not lie. What can I do with all this? How will it come out, if it will come out? I feel very sad.

The video can be quite shocking.

We are children of our time. Every generation lives according to it’s own dogmas.

I grew up in a period where in the arts ‘creativity’ was a key word. We had to let our souls free, become a ‘Homo Ludens’, a playing human being.

In the nineteen-thirties Johan Huizinga in the Netherlands introduced the term. It became a big item thirty years later. ‘Provo’ and the ‘Kabouters’ were two movements to be part of in order to show our parents, that we wanted to shake things up and ‘put different glasses on in order to see clearer’.

I was, as you may say, victim of all of this in my youth. I have had many teachers telling me I had to let loose and break free. ‘Be creative! Away with tradition! Away with education! We decide for ourselves what is good for us!'

(Quite some of them went for this way of teaching, because they could not produce a decent drawing. Better play the ‘innocent child’. As if children are innocent and only education turns them in monsters. And what can you build on these paintings as a follow up).

I admit that it is good to throw a brick through the windows of the palace of arts (and please have a good look inside) in order to shake things up every once in a while, as long as it is done with humor.

I still have fun looking at the photos of the ‘Insekten sekte’ en the ‘Deskundologen’.

But once everybody is awake again, it is time to go back to what art really is about. That is not something like having a peanut butter floor in a museum created by one of the most overrated Dutch artists: Wim T. Schippers. I have seen to many of these objects in museums. They do not wake me up or make me feel shocked anymore. I just run to the next room. Seen it and done it so many, many times...

I am gifted with the talent of being a pain.

If people say black, I say white. If people say break loose, I say tradition. So I did not really brake free, I also wanted to study the old masters. I was and still am convinced that you can only break free in a profound way if you know what your chains are. And why not do something with those chains.

I had to think of this, seeing the show ‘New Babylon’ in the Haags Gemeente Museum with my daughter. ‘New Babylon’ is the creation of Constant Nieuwenhuijs. He designed the new city for the 'Homo Ludens'.

Did Constant have a solid education, needed for breaking free in the profound way? I don’t know.

But what I know is that Gala loved the show. She chose the building in which she wants to live and that is a plus. Going to a museum with my child and seeing her happy makes me happy too. New Babylon is great, dispite all the sixties blabla I dislike so much.

Should I adjust my convictions? Or just give space for others to belief their own dogmas? Of course mine too are no guarantee to create good art and I should not force others to go my way…

In the end one just fights paper tigers. Art neither obeys nor follows rules. Sometimes I get a bit tired of myself. The only thing that I am totally sure of is that one has to stay curious. Maybe the 'Deskundologen' can help me out.

video: Cor Jaring, a Dutch photographer who documented the wild sixties and seventies.

(Art talks about art. There is always the reaction on what was before. The idea that a piece of art can stand on its own is ridiculous. Only the absolute painting can be like that and that painting will never be made).

I was painting a nude in the style of ‘THE MIRROR’, ‘THE RAPE OF EUROPE’, ‘THE SKY SCRATCHED OPEN’, ‘SPAGNOLITA’ and ‘SHHH’.

I was well underway, but the head would not show up (see image of blog before this one).

I had the desire to make a painting in the ‘rough style’, but then with a positive and sweet expression. A sexy young woman!

I have made ‘heads’ of women in the 'rough style' (here are the heads), but never with a really sweet expression, a real contradiction.

What is the 'sweetest girl' in art history? A good contestant is ‘GIRL WITH A PEARL EARRING’ of Vermeer. Painted in a very smooth way, the opposite of what I was looking for.

One cannot compete with a painting like that, but as a don Quijote one should only challenge the best. It is no use going after small talents. This was what came out as a sweet expression… She looks a bit more inviting, I'd say.

Title: 'GIRL WITH A PEARL EARRING, of course... and off course I changed it, you don't fool aroiund with Vermeer!  

I don't pretend to know better, I only want to challenge myself beyond my capacities and come up with what can be a surprise mainly to me. 

It might come in handy.

Soon I have to portray a woman. The complication is almost always that women do not like to be portrayed in a ‘rough’ way. No hint in the direction of wrinkles, no heavy shading, no sculptured images. And that is what I like so much!

To do some ‘research’ I have decided to give myself a series of sexy women painted in black and white, going loose.

What struck me in most pictures that I downloaded, is the frontal lighting. All is slick. So little to hang on…

The video? George Michael: 'Freedom' of course!

Back from Italy and inspired by Marino Marini, I started to paint in the old fashioned way. Finding the right balance between rough and exact. Leaving space for interpretation. Half way through the painting (a nude seen from the back) I got stuck.

I had had big plans; one night I dreamed the title for the ‘absolute painting’: ‘With time all dead flow into one’.

This was a new sensation, to have the title even before having started the painting. After ample reflection and having tried to make some sketches, I came to the conclusion that I will only be able to paint it, when I have become senile and reached the end of my life.

Never ever paint the absolute painting in the strength of life! What to do afterwards?

In the past I would have forced my way ahead. Now, thanks to the fact that I can work in different ways, I hopped over to the other way of painting.

I started a new 'flower' canvas, this time an iris.

image of iris on the easel and next to it the half finished nude seen from the back

Why do I make these flower paintings?

I am passionate about shiny bright colours. A subject that I have painted for years is butterflies. Butterflies as the series of 'Fallen Angels', I started after my New York days, later as the flying pieces of bright colour in for example 'Butterfly man'. I even confess to own a mounted butterfly...

From butterflies to flowers is a small step. Strong colours as seduction! 

One inspiration that made me go in the flower direction I have talked about in my blog of 02-02-2015: Monet’s water lilies.

There were the flower-still-lives of Manet too.

What really did the trick was a show of the watercolours of flowers by Emil Nolde seen in the early 90's. These images stayed in my head for years and years. The intensity of the colours overwhelmed me. 

a collage of flower paintings by: Monet, Manet, Nolde and me (who is who?).

But my interest in colours that light up actually goes further back than the show of Emil Nolde.

It started with a ruby… I saw the painting  ‘Ritratto di giovane donna con liocorno’ by Raffaello Sanzio in the Galleria Borghese in Rome long, long ago.

How was it possible that the ruby gives light???

For years I was puzzled, also because the solution did not fit in my way of working as I found out.

To get a result like that one has to paint a series of transparent layers of colours over the white underground, preferably the original underground. And my usual way of working consisted and often still consists of painting layer after layer of thick colours, trying to surprise myself. Not by carefully calculating!

Art might be the only occupation in which inconsequent behaviour can pay off. In 2011 I started to paint flowers in the ‘new’ technique first in gouache, carefully calculating where to have the white of the paper playing the role under a thin layer of transparent paint. I showed the first results in the show in Laren.

Works in oil paint followed. First 'new' colour to present itself as a breakthough I had had for years, but never used: ‘old Holland red gold lake’. Someone gave me that tube and only with the ruby it got under my attention again. That colour transparent over white glows like hell!

My palet for the 'flower' works has become totally different from the paintings in the ‘old’ way. Here colours like ‘doixine mauve’, ‘manganese violet reddish’, ‘cobalt violet dark’ and the mad ‘old holland yellow green’ play a prominent role. It is fun; often they react different from expected.

And here we are, it is almost summer… Flower 030 is finished (click on the name and the painting appears in a new window). For the moment I cannot produce brighter colours...

The video shows the late Herman Emmink, singing 'Tulips from Amsterdam'...

Whenever I am in Milan I go to see the portraits of Marino Marini. He is most famous for his sculptures of horses and men on horses, but I am totally addicted to his portraits.

Now they are to be found in the museum of 900, which I find a pity. They used to have their own space (see the black and white photos). It was designed by Arturo Bassi (could not information about him on the net, who can help me out?).

Click on the grey museum of 900 and you will find information about the museum.

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There was never anybody there. When I’d visit a guard used to follow me through the rooms. Like that he made his round accompanied by someone else.

And for years I had fantasies stealing some of the portraits. I even talked about it with a sculptor...

The space where they are now is very, horribly poorly lit, look at the portrait of Henry Moore. How to kill a sculpture… Even the sculpture behind him seems to have a headache… And then the way they are spread all over the space... Could it have been done more tasteless?

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Let’s leave the museum the museum and look at the works.

Besides being art of today, MM's work is deeply rooted in the Etruscan art tradition. He was very concious of where he was born and grown up.

Years ago I fell in love with (this portrait of) the Etruscan Hera-Juno of Falerii.

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It is the simplicity of these sculptures that strikes me. Much of the Etruscan art has nothing to do with the over the top Hellinistic decadence. (It reminds me of why Rembrandt was not popular at the end of his life. The art buyers wanted ‘refined’ stuff. Rich societies often prefer decadent and over the top art). Etruscan art is nothing like that. No pompous detailing, no dramatic poses.

Here are some examples with two sculptures of MM (in color) in between them. Just to show my point. They fit in very well.

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Another aspect of MM’s work that helps me while making my paintings is the balance he found between the finished and unfinished. You have the feeling ‘Marino has just left the building’. He played with the material, lets it talk in its proper language. And it leaves space for the spectator 'to fill in the rest', thus making it more one's own.

The ultimate example is the portrait of Mies van der Rohe.

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It may seem that he did not go for exquisite little detailing, but then have a look at the twinkle in the eye of De Pisis. Unfortunately it gets lost in the new place where it is exposed. I have to do it with the memory.

How to explain the greatness of these portraits? In the end words cannot explain. But if ever you are in Milano, go to see them!

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The video below is a compilage of several of his portraits. Amongst them: Igor Stravinsky, Marc Chagall, Mies van der Rohe, Filippo de Pisis, Carlo Carrà and Henry Miller. Enjoy!  

During my trip through Italy, I visited the museo Castelvecchio in Verona. For the first time in my life I did not look at the artworks. I only looked at the museum. (Click on all the grey names and in a new window you find more information).

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The museum was reorganized and redesigned by Carlo Scarpa between 1958 and 1975. Not an architect unfamiliar to me, but apart from the museo Rovoltella in Trieste, the entrance of the architecture faculty, the Olivetti shop and a bridge in Venice, I had not seen much of his work in real life.

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How do you turn a half destroyed fortress with Gothic elements added into a magic place? There is so much to tell and yet nothing to say. One just has to visit the museum and be overwhelmed by the exquisite taste in detailing, the balance between space and object, the use of materials and the modesty of all.

Well, maybe not really the modesty, as I said, I did not look at the artworks…

He showed that one has never to stop playing. The way he placed the statue of Canalgrande in the void has nothing to do with straightforward logical thinking. It is pure poetry, total madness and at the same time it seems the very best and most beautiful solution. In the video I show a selection of the photos I took.

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Last stop on my trip was Venice. And there I saw the new Gallerie dell’Accademia, recently reorganized by the son of Carlo, Tobia Scarpa. You see very clear the hand of the father.

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To finish it off; I stayed at Sergio Pascolo's place in Venice. And to my very pleasant surprise his architecture studio is in what used to be the studio of Carlo Scarpa!

Enjoy and if you want, you can leave a comment below! 

I finished the painting ‘Au Suivant’ not long ago. It is one of those canvasses that went through a long process before it was done. It belongs in the ‘series’ of ‘Le Sacre du Printemps’, ‘Ecstasy or the Puppeteer’, ‘Shhh’, ‘Setting Sun’ and others.

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I took a canvas called ‘Fist’, that if I remember well I finished in the early nineties. No use being sentimental, I never sold it, looked at it long enough to get bored, so why not use the canvas for a new painting?

The idea for the 'new' canvas was given by the visit with Gala to see the mummy of Cleopatra in the British Museum.

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See below:

Painting finished! I put it on the site and some people loved it. I asked for a title and thank Tove Seeland for having given me the beautiful: ‘All the things we forgot to say to each other’.

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But… something irritated me. I had the feeling that I left it halfway. It was not tight enough and it looked too much like a caricature, a loose statement. It stayed locked away for a couple of months and then I went back to it.

First I changed the laying figure. The space she was laying in was still something of an aquarium, but became darker. And the big head started to breath.

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This way of painting is trial and error. I put a second figure underneath and took away the big head on top (1 in image underneath). The big head had stayed there because I liked it, but never really made sense to me. The breathing did not convince me either. The two figures at the bottom were making a fire. Fire is always good to put in a painting. It is violent and it is light. It made more sense to me...

But then the whole bottom went on fire (2 in image underneath).

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The seated figure on the bottom left stood up and the figure on the bottom right disappeared (3 in image above) and reappeared mounting the laying figure…

Things were starting to fall on their places. I love to play with shadows and the tension they can give (4 and 5).

I gave up the idea of a bright painting and in my over enthusiasm was left with a solid but too monochrome canvas (6: thinking about Mies’ credo: ‘less is more’).

I left it alone for a week and then gave it the last and decicive kick.

Here it is: 'AU SUIVANT'!

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The name I stole from the chanson of Jacques Brel. I do not like to explain the meaning of the painting, just read the text of the video…

(This also because a painting 'happens to me' if all goes well, so I do not like to then direct it somewhere I want. I don't give a moral, I show).

We (a group of 5 painters) are talking about organizing a show. In the discussion about how to attract a large crowd, I suggested to have a nude model we could paint during the opening. Three painters are women, so I said, why not take a male and a female model.

I know what I am talking about. In 1998 I made sketches of a nude model during the opening of the galleries of the Spiegelkwartier in Amsterdam. It was a big success.

One of the 5 painters, if I am not mistaken, found it a banal idea. Is it? And who or what is banal? The one who tries to make a beautiful drawing of a beautiful subject, or the person who only comes to see a nude girl/boy?

Ok, you may attract a big crowd and many might just be exited because there is a naked person to be seen, but let’s leave that aside… Making a great drawing can never be banal. All this made me think of painting nudes.

Matisse loved to paint nudes.

What has often wondered me is how people look at his odalisques. He is considered the artist of pleasant images: flowers, intimate family life in bright colors and nude women. All fine with me, but those odalisques…

What was the life of an odalisque about? Weren’t they slaves? Held imprisoned and raped by califs? What was Matisse after, painting women like that?

In 1914 the suffragette Mary Richardson attacked the Rockeby Venus of Velazquez in the National Gallery in London with a meat cleaver out of protest (click on Mary Richardson to read more about her action).

Why hasn’t any feminist destroyed some odalisques of Matisse? In Matisse' case we really talk about the visualization of exploitation of women, not with the Venus of Velazquez. You should choose the right subject...

What to do...as a heterosexual male I do confess; I prefer to paint beautiful naked women over rotten potatoes.

this time I chose a sexy music video, have fun!

Soon it will be Easter. This blog is about the Pietà I made for the Gesù Redentore (church) in Modena, Italy.

I often talk more about the way I paint than what I paint.

This time tough, the message of the painting is of fundamental importance.

Don Marco (then the priest of the parish) insisted on the work to give a positive message. How can one give a positive twist to a Pietà? In the end I found a way.

I had decided to paint a triptych and this gave me the possibility to solve the problem.

I will concentrate on Mary and Jesus.

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The Pietà shows the mourning of Mary over her dead son.

Instead of going for the usual image of Mary having her son on her lap, I chose for the moment just before. Mary walks towards Jesus with her arms open. Jesus sits in the crucifixion position. All came together here.

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A painting is a poetic interpretation of an idea and mine is here:

Mary is the mother of God and all Christians. The time between the death of Jesus and his resurrection one could see as the period that she is pregnant of Christianity.

Jesus blesses the womb of Mary.

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Her face in the shadow shows her mourning. This takes place in the present, but her womb catches the first rays of the birth of Christianity. Voilà... 

Have a great Easter!

The video? 

IL VANGELO SECONDO MATTEO (trailor)

Pier Paolo Pasolini

For me one of the greatest geniuses of cinema.

I feel a fortunate person. I must have met Anna in 1985. For me she was the personification of what she did, an art restorer. She died a year ago, far too young.

With this blog I hope I can preserve the memory of her, ‘to restore her’, bring her to the present.  

She was the director of the 'Istituto Supreriore per la Conservazione ed il Restauro'. She was like an ocean of knowledge.

Thanks to her I got to see the most astonishing artworks from very nearby. 

And she bought work of mine; lecturing me that I had used the wrong materials… 

Amongst the wonders I saw:

The statue of Marco Aurelio while being restored. 

The Foro Romano in the snow

The Santa Maria Antiqua church frescos (it astonished me that the clothes of the person were almost painted in an impressionist way. There you go, Vasari!!! Before the Romanesque period they knew how to paint naturalistic!)

Tiziano's Amore Sacro e Profano * (Anna showed me that the figure on the left is not sitting on the tomb but ‘floating’ in front of it).

*: click on the name to see a video about the painting. 

Carravaggio's Resurazione di Lazzaro *

*: click on the name to see a video about the restauration

And so many more great works... When I was in Rome I always visited her office or a ‘cantiere’. We talked about the works from the different points of view, she as a preserver, me as a painter.

There was more.

She gave me the recipe of bucatini alle sarde and that wonderful very easy to make spaghetti with pecorino stagionato, lots of olive oil and black pepper…

In 2010 I tried to get my project 'Art Hysteria' * off ground. Anna liked it very much (*click on the name and you will see the sketch of the project I made for her with two works she restaured.... Which paintings did I quote?).

We went to the Palazzo Barberini to talk to the director about the project as a possible aid for children to get better introduced to the arts. I still belief it could be a great way to make children really look at art, but as with so many of these initiatives, the times are against it. 

In the palazzo Barberini I saw the Pietro da Cortona fresco with her that I talked about in the last blog… (click on the word grey 'blog' to go to the blog).

When we walked through the garden the trees were blossoming. It is there that I decided to paint flowers.

Rome will never be the same again.