Adieu, photograph from 1975

At an early age, I had already grasped that a theory is nothing but a construct, a work of artifice. I realized this at the age of ten when my mother remarried and I became Catholic instead of Protestant. Overnight, I was expected to reject everything that I’d been taught to believe was sacred and the opposite was presented to me as a new truth. That was a crucial moment, the insight that: nothing is true. One theory is always interchangeable with another. The essence of all the work I have created since then lies in those childhood events. Truth that is not truth, but a construct. The discrepancy between content and form, the sublime and the banal, art and kitsch. [Excerpt from Ger van Elk’s 1996 acceptance speech for the J.C. van Lanschot Prize for the Visual Arts at the Kröller-MüllerMuseum]        

Since I last wrote I have been busy researching Ger van Elk and the provenance of his pieces in Rijswijk. I have done a large portion of this research in Amsterdam’s modern art museum, the Stedelijk, which has a comfortable library and an impressive archival collection. With the help of a friendly Dutch librarian (who spoke perfect English, of course) I was able to get my hands on the original 1975 catalogue from the traveling art show ‘Reflektie en Realiteit’, which is where both Four Symmetrical Landscapes and Adieu were acquired by the National Arts Foundation. I also interviewed a contemporary art scholar – Dr. Sanneke Stigter – who wrote her PhD on Ger van Elk and has become a personal friend of the artist, even appearing in some of his most recent artwork! Before pursuing her doctorate, Dr. Stigter received an MA in conservation and restoration through the University of Amsterdam, which shares office space with the RCE (Rijksdienst voor het Cultureel Erfgoed – that’s the Cultural Heritage Agency’s real name in Dutch for you!). Dr. Stigter then worked for several years as a conservator for the Kröller-Müller Museum, which has a significant modern and contemporary art collection. During her time at the Kröller-Müller Museum, Dr. Stigter dealt with some interesting conservation issues regarding work by Ger van Elk, which I will describe in my next post.

Stedelijk Museum Library, image courtesy of http://www.stedilijk.nl

Pages 10-11 of Reflketie en Realiteit 1975 Catalogue 

Back to Adieu! You probably notice some differences in appearance between the photographs of Adieu that I have provided thus far and the photograph from the year it was created. Most noticeably, the colors of the sky in the background are much clearer and brighter in the 1975 photograph. Here, we see a red-pink area at the top and a light blue area at the bottom separated by a mostly white cloud formation. On a side note, I find it interesting that this color arrangement mirrors that of the Dutch flag, pictured below.

Adieu is a theoretically rich and compelling piece on it’s own, however, it is important to note that it relates to a series van Elk created in 1974. The Adieu Series consists of gouache and ink applied to color photographs, which depict paintings propped on easels. The Adieu works are all irregularly shaped and framed in heavy, black-painted spruce, challenging the traditional rectangle form and emphasizing the physical reality of a painting as an object. As the name of the series suggests, van Elk spoke about these works as farewells, as curtains closing on art. This was during a time that the discussion of ‘the death of painting’ was raging, and the concept of painting over a photograph of a painting (taken from such extreme angles that even the 2-dimensionality of the artist’s surface is challenged) was van Elk’s confrontation of accepted norms and truths in art.

Ger van Elk, The Adieu I, 1974, ink and gouache on color photograph in frame, 132 x 84 cm, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam

Ger van Elk, The Adieu III, 1974, ink and gouache on color photograph on aluminum, in frame, 99.2 x 92.3 x 4.3 cm, The Museum of Modern Art, New York

Ger van Elk, The Adieu IV, 1974, ink and gouache on color photograph, in frame, 120 x 94 cm, Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven