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Author(s):  
Joan E. Greer

This article is concerned with representations of insects and insect habitats in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Dutch art and print culture. It adopts an eco-critical approach, with an eye toward multispecies studies. The article considers the ecologically conceived image of bees, butterflies, and other insects gathering pollen from a wide range of flowering plant life in Theo van Hoytema’s lithograph announcing the Biological Exhibition: the Life of Plants and Animals held in 1910 at the Royal Zoological Botanical Gardens in The Hague. This closely observed water’s-edge environment is considered in the context of the wider body of works on paper done by Van Huitema especially during the seminal period of the 1890s, and within the growing print culture surrounding the Dutch naturalist and environmental movements in the early years of the twentieth century.


2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (3/4) ◽  
pp. 328-352
Author(s):  
Lieske Tibbe

Abstract Potato eaters. A mundane theme in painting, 1885-1905 In late nineteenth-century Dutch art criticism, the topic of ‘poor people eating potatoes’ seems to have been a kind of litmus test for modern, Realist art. It was a sign of the dissolution of the hierachy of the genres, the decline of idealist painting with its elevated, literary themes, and it marked the emerging popularity of commonplace subjects without specific moral meaning attached to them. Likewise, painting of romantic, picturesque landscapes gave way to the more prosaic theme of hard work in the field. Poor farm workers at their shabby meal of potatoes, the fruits of their labour, were part of this subject matter. ‘Modern’ critics welcomed the shift in topics, ‘conservative’ ones fulminated against what they saw as a sign of decay. Catalogues of Exhibitions of Living Artists (Tentoonstellingen van Levende Meesters) and other expositions have been searched for paintings showing potato eaters, or related images like potato peeling, planting, digging, or potato still lifes. Quantitatively, these exhibitions did not justify the art critics’ rhetoric. Qualitatively, the critics’ aversion to the ‘potato eating’ theme was possibly related to its association with poverty and the imminent physical and moral decay of the lower class of the population. In modern realistic literature potato consumption also stood for degeneration. Partly outside the official art circuity, artists like Mauve, Witsen, Toorop, and especially Van Gogh showed potato production and consumption as ‘The Heroism of Daily Life’.


2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 34-59
Author(s):  
Marius Dumitrescu

This article aims to present the philosophical perspective upon the birth of the idea of the individual and the consequences of the discovery of the self-image on the techniques of image reproduction from the Renaissance to the present day. The process of projecting the self-image into the public space acquires a special importance with the elaboration of the portrait technique in the Italian painting of the 15th century. Through Leonardo da Vinci's paintings, this technique of reproducing self-image reaches a certain perfection. Following the evolution of this kind of projections and reproductions of the self-image, it is found that there is an obvious tendency by which the individual tends to free himself from certain patterns, or rather canons, which a certain epoch imposes. This process manifested in the visual arts corresponds to a new philosophical perception of man opened by the works of Ficino and Pico della Mirandola. The assertion of a new type of dignity, correlated with the idea of the microcosm, of the Renaissance man will lead to an affirmation of his own personality and especially to an increase of the will to power reflected more and more in the works of art. With the resurgence of the Italian renaissance, artists and philosophers experienced a decline, but found a favorable space for their development at the court of Elizabeth I, Queen of England. The art of portraiture, but also the philosophy of renaissance survives and is even more flourishing at the court of this queen. But the most important moment of this renaissance is marked by Dutch art after its liberation from Spanish rule. From this moment on, the emancipation of the individual will occur on an unimaginable scale until then.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Zell

This chapter explores the distinctive gift culture and the gifting of art in seventeenth-century Holland. Although gift giving has been marginalized in studies of seventeenth-century Dutch art, gift exchanges of various kinds, including art, were widespread in Dutch mercantile culture. Giving gifts was considered obligatory for nurturing burgher professional and personal relationships, and gifts of art played a key role in the Republic’s diplomatic engagements. Like their colleagues elsewhere, Dutch artists mixed gifts with sales transactions by offering their works as gifts to potential and established patrons, contacts, and familiars. Discussion of the special cases of Rembrandt and Vermeer is reserved for later chapters, but here examples of gifts by Hendrick Goltzius, Jan Lievens, Govert Flinck, and others are addressed.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Zell

This book offers a new perspective on the art of the Dutch Golden Age by exploring the interaction between the gift's symbolic economy of reciprocity and obligation and the artistic culture of early modern Holland. Gifts of art were pervasive in seventeenth-century Europe and many Dutch artists, like their counterparts elsewhere, embraced gift giving to cultivate relations with patrons, art lovers, and other members of their social networks. Rembrandt also created distinctive works to function within a context of gift exchange, and both Rembrandt and Vermeer engaged the ethics of the gift to identify their creative labor as motivated by what contemporaries called a love of art


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Zell

This chapter examines Rembrandt’s embrace of gift exchange over his career and analyzes the works he created to function as gifts among favored patrons, collectors, and intimates. Rembrandt’s gifts to important patrons and other figures in the 1630s largely conform to the conventions and courtesies expected of gift transactions. From the late 1640s through the 1660s, as Rembrandt’s primary supporters shifted to liefhebbers, gentlemen-dealers, and cultured members of the burgher class, however, he intensified his engagement and became more experimental with gift giving. Through highly distinctive prints designed to circulate as gifts, Rembrandt enlisted the gift economy to nurture ties with his inner sanctum, harnessing the ethics of gift giving to cultivate a unique position in the Dutch art world.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Zell

This chapter explores Vermeer’s art in relation to the ethics and aesthetics of the gift. The gift culture of Dutch burgher society together with the conceptual framework of the gift paradigm cast new light on Vermeer’s exceptionalism. Vermeer’s depictions of beautiful women and refined courtship encourage the art lover to experience his paintings as if in love with their seductive beauty, figuring the ideal relationship between beholder and artwork, and painter and painting, in contemporary Dutch art theory. As objects of desire of the viewer and Vermeer himself, his paintings thematize art’s inspiration in love, not the desire for fame or profit, laying claim to a gift-like status and carving out a symbolic space exempt from ordinary measures of value.


2021 ◽  
Vol 101 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 324-356
Author(s):  
Nina Schroeder

Abstract This paper considers the artist Arnold Houbraken (1660–1719) as an unconventional Christian and sheds new light on his representation of artists from religious minority groups in his Great Theatre of Netherlandish Painters and Painteresses (1718–1721). By exploring Houbraken’s years within the Flemish Mennonite milieu in Dordrecht (1660–ca. 1685) and investigating his representation of religious difference in his biographies within The Great Theatre, this study extends scholarship on Houbraken beyond the current focus on his later years as a writer in Amsterdam, and it offers findings on the experience and reception history of nonconformists and religious minority group members, like the spiritualist David Joris and the Mennonite martyr Jan Woutersz van Cuyck (among others), within the Dutch art world. The paper also addresses the historiographical disconnect between literature in the disciplines of art history, intellectual history, and history of religion that persisted until very recently regarding Houbraken’s status as a heterodox Enlightenment thinker.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Zell

This book offers a new perspective on the art of the Dutch Golden Age by exploring the interaction between the gift's symbolic economy of reciprocity and obligation and the artistic culture of early modern Holland. Gifts of art were pervasive in seventeenth-century Europe and many Dutch artists, like their counterparts elsewhere, embraced gift giving to cultivate relations with patrons, art lovers, and other members of their social networks. Rembrandt also created distinctive works to function within a context of gift exchange, and both Rembrandt and Vermeer engaged the ethics of the gift to identify their creative labor as motivated by what contemporaries called a "love of art," not materialistic gain. In the merchant republic's vibrant market for art, networks of gift relations and the anti-economic rhetoric of the gift mingled with the growing dimension of commerce, revealing a unique chapter in the interconnected history of gift giving and art making.


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