Stepping into Mondrian’s shoes, and other adventures in Dutch style
When the director of a major Dutch museum visited the Museum of Modern Art in New York a few years ago, he was distressed to see that its display of de Stijl works was far superior to anything the Netherlands had done on this renowned Dutch art movement.
“It was quite painful,” said Benno Tempel, director of the Gemeentemuseum in The Hague.
But that was in 2011. Now de Stijl is getting its due in the country where it began. The Netherlands is hosting a yearlong, nationwide celebration of the 100th anniversary of de Stijl (“the style”), a movement that began in 1917 and is characterised by the reduction of form and colour to their essentials: bold, simple, abstract geometric compositions and primary hues.
“There is a vibrancy and an energy that still speaks to a lot of people,” Tempel said. (The Gemeentemuseum will feature several major shows this year.)
Piet Mondrian may be a familiar name, but the other leading artists of the de Stijl movement — Gerrit Rietveld, Theo van Doesburg and Bart van der Leck — are not as well known. Nonetheless, the style, reflected widely in popular culture, from graphic design and advertising to fashion, “is instantly recognisable”, said Nancy J. Troy, a professor of art history at Stanford and author of The Afterlife Of Piet Mondrian. “Its graphic power and purity of colour” are “something people feel comfortable with and can relate to, perhaps surprisingly, given its abstraction”, she said.
A celebration titled “Mondrian To Dutch Design” features hundreds of exhibitions, special events, festivals and tours — at dozens of museums and other venues across the Netherlands — that highlight past and contemporary artists and designers and everything from paintings and architecture to typography and furniture.
Conrad van Tiggelen, marketing director for the Netherlands Board of Tourism & Conventions, said one of the goals was “to get people out of Amsterdam to other parts of the country”. Many of the destinations along the 18-city design route are close to one another and easily accessible. Amersfoort, for example, is only a 34-minute train ride from Amsterdam. The Mondrian House there, where the artist was born in 1872 and lived until he was eight, will reopen in March as a permanent “experiential” museum.
But t he festivities do not stop at museums.
Across the country, many local entrepreneurs are bringing the theme to life in their cities or regions, van Tiggelen said. Guests to Amersfoort can stay in a Mondrian-style room at Hotel de Tabaksplant and receive themed goody bags and drink “de Stijl beer”, a special variety produced for the celebration year by the regional brewery De Leckere and served and sold at area restaurants, bars and shops.
Inge Vos, owner of Amersfoort Guides, has created a guided walking tour that focuses on what the town would have looked like through the eyes of an eightyear-old boy.
“The members of de Stijl saw how technology, science and society had fundamentally changed the world, and decided that art also needed to undergo a radical transformation in order to speak the language of this new era,” Vos said. “We combine these two elements — his youth and the transformation — in our tours.”
In Drachten, in the northern Netherlands, “you feel de Stijl everywhere”, said Paulo Martina, director of the Drachten Museum. Special exhibitions will be organised during the year, along with family-friendly activities like “colour lab” workshops. There will be fashion shows with de Stijl-inspired textiles, a gay pride parade with participants decked out in primary colours, and jazz concerts.
“Everybody knows Mondrian loved jazz,” Martina said.
In June, the Van Doesburg-Rinsema House, one of a complex of 16 middle-class homes built in the 1920s in Drachten, will open to the public for the first time.
The Princessehof National Museum of Ceramics in Leeuwarden plans a special exhibition dedicated to ceramic work, noting that Dutch designers increasingly work in that medium.
Eindhoven, home to a prominent Dutch Design Week held annually in October, will offer themed events throughout the year. During an interactive “designer for a day” event, participants can take tours by bike or on foot and get the opportunity to design and create their own objects like a bag or plant hanger. A city design tour will take visitors to rarely visited studios and locations for a behind-the-scenes look at how designers work.
“We want to share the process of design with visitors,” said Tim Vermeulen, programme manager for the Dutch Design Foundation and Dutch Design Week. “We not only show the finished products, but encourage designers to show their failures.”
Vermeulen said much of the art being produced today was not unlike that of 100 years ago. Both reflect an aesthetic that
There is a vibrancy and an energy that still speaks to a lot of people
is practical, socially minded and part of everyday life. “The Dutch have a tradition of making art, architecture and design as inclusive as possible,” he said. “It’s part of our visual DNA.