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Artikelen
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In 1989, during excavations of the site of the Mariakerk in Diemen, which was demolished in 1808, over one-hundred-and-fifty, remarkably good quality, architecture and sculpture fragments came to light. They are the remains of an exceptionally refined Sacrament House that was probably destroyed during the Reformation. It was composed of many vertical elements and of painted and gold-leaf-embellished figures. Judging from the style and iconography, it probably originated in Utrecht around 1460/70. The sculpture seems too opulent for a parish as small and impoverished as Diemen was at that time. Because of indications that the object in question had been dismantled and reassembled, its location in Diemen suggests that it was a secondhand Sacrament House, since outmoded Sacrament Houses from wealthier church establishments were often sold on to smaller churches when their design went out of fashion. Thus the object will have originally been made for a more prestigious setting. Given the links between the Diemen and Utrecht Maria churches (the provost of the Utrecht Mariakerk appointed the Diemen priest), it is quite conceivable that the Sacrament House came originally from the Mariakerk in Utrecht. At any rate, in 1516 a grand new Sacrament House, measuring no less than 30 feet, was ordered for the Utrecht Mariakerk. An older Sacrament House would not simply be thrown away, but sold or turned over to one of its own parish churches. Its transfer to Diemen is a possibility that merits serious consideration. If that was in fact what happened, a Utrecht-made Sacrament House, possibly from Utrecht’s Mariakerk, led a second life of some forty years in Diemen from circa 1516 to 1566, until being smashed to smithereens during the Protestant Iconoclasm. While the surviving fragments may be too small to enable the Sacrament House to be reconstructed, they are big enough to continue to tell their own story, notwithstanding the Iconoclasm and possible later mishandling of the object.
In 1989, during excavations of the site of the Mariakerk in Diemen, which was demolished in 1808, over one-hundred-and-fifty, remarkably good quality, architecture and sculpture fragments came to light. They are the remains of an exceptionally refined Sacrament House that was probably destroyed during the Reformation. It was composed of many vertical elements and of painted and gold-leaf-embellished figures. Judging from the style and iconography, it probably originated in Utrecht around 1460/70. The sculpture seems too opulent for a parish as small and impoverished as Diemen was at that time. Because of indications that the object in question had been dismantled and reassembled, its location in Diemen suggests that it was a secondhand Sacrament House, since outmoded Sacrament Houses from wealthier church establishments were often sold on to smaller churches when their design went out of fashion. Thus the object will have originally been made for a more prestigious setting. Given...
In 1989, during excavations of the site of the Mariakerk in Diemen, which was demolished in 1808, over one-hundred-and-fifty, remarkably good quality, architecture and sculpture fragments came to light. They are the remains of an exceptionally refined Sacrament House that was probably...
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One hundred years after its emergence, the Amsterdam School still manages to fascinate people with its whimsical forms and bright colours. Although the frame of reference for the forms is known, there has been less interest in investigating the use of colour. The (Dutch) catalogue to the ‘Living in the Amsterdam School’ exhibition touched on the topic visually, noting similarities with German expressionism and the art of Wassily Kandinsky. This article addresses the affinity between the Amsterdam School and painting from the perspective of the investigation of style and ornament from the second half of the nineteenth century. The accompanying linkage of developments in architecture, applied art and painting is discussed in terms of colour theory.
Underpinning this are the book Stilarchitektur und Baukunst (Style-architecture and Building-art, 1901) by Hermann Muthesius, from which the title of this article is borrowed, Wassily Kandinsky’s Über das Geistige in der Kunst (Concerning the Spiritual in Art, 1912), and Josef August Lux’s ‘Die Erneuerung der Ornamentik’ (The Revival of Ornament,1908).
When developments in applied art, painting and architecture are looked at conjointly, it becomes evident that the Amsterdam School was not an isolated phenomenon but one step in a development that originated in the nineteenth century. Colour theory is part of this development and key to the astonishingly bright but harmonious use of colour in the Amsterdam School. The lead-in was Owen Jones’s celebrated Grammar of Ornament (1856), which referred to new colour theories. From the emergence of the new approach to applied art around 1850, ornament changed in the space of sixty-odd years from impressionistic stylization of natural forms and colours into the psychological linking of line, form and colour in expression. While the use of colour was generally harmonious, the colour palette changed in line with the abstraction. At the end of the nineteenth century, neo-impressionism accelerated the development of a new ornamentation. Artist-architects like Henry van de Velde, who had started out as painters, were the prime movers, including in the field of colour. For abstract (line) ornaments, ‘pure colours’ were used, including secondary colours. According to the principles of neo-impressionism, which were based chiefly on the colour theory and ‘simultaneous contrast’ of Michel-Eugène Chevreul, these colours were not to be mixed. The main thing was the psychological experience in the association of line, form and colour that is characteristic of expressionism, as also described by Johannes Itten in his colour theory. With the transition from Gesamtkunstwerk to Gemeenschapskunst the stylized natural ornaments changed, under the influence of theosophy, into rhythmical geometric patterns and subjective colour experience became objectively verifiable. Goethe’s ‘sensuous-moral effect of colour’, Rudolf Steiner’s ‘Das Wesen der Farbe’ (Nature of Colour), as well as the scientifically underpinned colour harmonies in standardized colours according to Ostwald, can be seen as attempts to capture colour objectively.The visual similarity with expressionism can be substantiated. Kandinsky’s Über das Geistige in der Kunst – often regarded as a paraphrase of Goethe’s 1810 colour theory – is helpful in understanding the views on form and colour in the Amsterdam School. Regarded in this light, expressionism is not so much synonymous with bright colours as with the psychological combination of form and colour as an expression in an inner impression. The Amsterdam School pursued the expressionistic combination of form and colour in an objectified manner, in what one could call ‘objective expressionism’, where the colours in the rhythmical geometric patterns correspond to the colours of the neo-impressionistic painter’s palette.
One hundred years after its emergence, the Amsterdam School still manages to fascinate people with its whimsical forms and bright colours. Although the frame of reference for the forms is known, there has been less interest in investigating the use of colour. The (Dutch) catalogue to the ‘Living in the Amsterdam School’ exhibition touched on the topic visually, noting similarities with German expressionism and the art of Wassily Kandinsky. This article addresses the affinity between the Amsterdam School and painting from the perspective of the investigation of style and ornament from the second half of the nineteenth century. The accompanying linkage of developments in architecture, applied art and painting is discussed in terms of colour theory.
Underpinning this are the book Stilarchitektur und Baukunst (Style-architecture and Building-art, 1901) by Hermann Muthesius, from which the title of this article is borrowed, Wassily Kandinsky’s Über das...
One hundred years after its emergence, the Amsterdam School still manages to fascinate people with its whimsical forms and bright colours. Although the frame of reference for the forms is known, there has been less interest in investigating the use of colour. The (Dutch) catalogue to the...
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In KNOB Bulletin 115 (2016), Dirk de Vries set about drawing the sculptor and architect Gerrit Lambertsen van Cuilenborch (1597–1657) out of the shadow of Hendrick de Keyser, one of whose chief assistants he had been. In his article, De Vries attributed the ‘Dolhuysvrouw’ (Madhouse Woman) or De Razernij (Frenzy), a statue from the garden of the Amsterdam Madhouse, currently in the Rijksmuseum, to Lambertsen and dated it before his departure for Kampen around 1627/28. Neither attribution nor dating is persuasive, however, and both ignore more recent insights. On stylistic grounds – the borrowing from Italian examples and similarities with the work of Rubens and Artus Quellinus for the Palace on the Dam – De Razernij should be attributed to the latter sculptor and his studio and dated post-1650, nearly 25 years after Lambertsen had left Amsterdam. Moreover, there are no convincing stylistic parallels with Lambertsen’s documented works. Support for the post-1650 dating comes from a series of illustrations or descriptions in Amsterdam publications from the 1660s onwards. De Razernij is first mentioned in the stadsbeschrijving (city description) of Amsterdam penned by M. Fokkens (1662), and subsequently in those by O. Dapper (1663), T. Van Domseaer (1665), C. Commelin (1693) and J. Wagenaar (1765). It is also noteworthy that on the large and detailed map of Amsterdam by Balthasar Florisz from 1625, the Dolhuys is visible, but not De Razernij. Finally, echoes of the statue are to be found in Rombout Verhulst’s relief (dated 1660) for the Pesthuis (Plague House) in Leiden, and in a statue at Schloss Herrenhausen (Hanover) from 1702/10.
In KNOB Bulletin 115 (2016), Dirk de Vries set about drawing the sculptor and architect Gerrit Lambertsen van Cuilenborch (1597–1657) out of the shadow of Hendrick de Keyser, one of whose chief assistants he had been. In his article, De Vries attributed the ‘Dolhuysvrouw’ (Madhouse Woman) or De Razernij (Frenzy), a statue from the garden of the Amsterdam Madhouse, currently in the Rijksmuseum, to Lambertsen and dated it before his departure for Kampen around 1627/28. Neither attribution nor dating is persuasive, however, and both ignore more recent insights. On stylistic grounds – the borrowing from Italian examples and similarities with the work of Rubens and Artus Quellinus for the Palace on the Dam – De Razernij should be attributed to the latter sculptor and his studio and dated post-1650, nearly 25 years after Lambertsen had left Amsterdam. Moreover, there are no convincing stylistic parallels with Lambertsen’s documented works. Support...
In KNOB Bulletin 115 (2016), Dirk de Vries set about drawing the sculptor and architect Gerrit Lambertsen van Cuilenborch (1597–1657) out of the shadow of Hendrick de Keyser, one of whose chief assistants he had been. In his article, De Vries attributed the ‘Dolhuysvrouw’...
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This article discusses the emergence of the first female architects in the Netherlands and puts it into perspective by comparing it with the emergence of women practitioners in disciplines closely related to architecture, such as furniture and landscape design. Female participation in professions that required higher or university qualifications was far from self-evident in the first half of the twentieth century. This was even truer for technical occupations, which were regarded as a typically male preserve. Thanks to the women’s movement, this gradually started to change. In 1917, Grada Wolffensperger was the first woman to graduate as ‘building engineer’ from Delft Technical University, the only university-level architectural course in the Netherlands at that time. Wolffensperger did not allow public opposition to deter her from opting to become an architect. Following in her wake, eighteen women completed their architecture degree course before 1946. Two female architects gained their diploma at the VHBO (forerunner of today’s Academy of Architecture) in Amsterdam.
Of the 21 female architecture graduates, five (24 per cent) practised for only a short time or not at all. Grada Wolffensperger was for unknown reasons already listed as without occupation not long after graduating. Single women among the sixteen who were practising architects worked in education, for the government or were self-employed. Four women worked with their husband in their own architectural practice. Interestingly, no women were partners in architectural practices owned by third parties.
The female architecture graduates published rarely, if at all. If they aspired to do so, they clearly did not manage to penetrate the all-male editorial offices that dominated professional periodicals. Membership of women’s advocacy groups and professional associations provided those trailblazing female architects with useful networks and contributed to their professionalization.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, women were also turning to disciplines like furniture design and interior, garden and landscape architecture that were closely related to architecture, but in which there was greater public acceptance of female participation. These professions and associated training programmes evolved gradually and the dividing lines between them were not clearly defined. The group of women relevant to this study worked independently, were reasonably successful, and were creative in finding ways of promoting their work.
Margaret Staal-Kropholler (1891–1966), who never graduated as an architect, is nevertheless still regarded as the Netherlands’ first female architect. This acknowledgement is partly due to the body of work she produced and to her publications and lectures. Of those contemporaries who did complete an architectural course, most managed to build a good career. Yet these women did not receive – or may not even have sought – the publicity accorded to Staal-Kropholler. The acknowledgement and respect that they very likely received was not widely reported in the media.
This article discusses the emergence of the first female architects in the Netherlands and puts it into perspective by comparing it with the emergence of women practitioners in disciplines closely related to architecture, such as furniture and landscape design. Female participation in professions that required higher or university qualifications was far from self-evident in the first half of the twentieth century. This was even truer for technical occupations, which were regarded as a typically male preserve. Thanks to the women’s movement, this gradually started to change. In 1917, Grada Wolffensperger was the first woman to graduate as ‘building engineer’ from Delft Technical University, the only university-level architectural course in the Netherlands at that time. Wolffensperger did not allow public opposition to deter her from opting to become an architect. Following in her wake, eighteen women completed their architecture degree course before 1946. Two female...
This article discusses the emergence of the first female architects in the Netherlands and puts it into perspective by comparing it with the emergence of women practitioners in disciplines closely related to architecture, such as furniture and landscape design. Female participation in...
Boekbesprekingen
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Review of a book authored by Yme Kuiper and Ben Olde Meierink.
Review of a book authored by Yme Kuiper and Ben Olde Meierink.
Review of a book authored by Yme Kuiper and Ben Olde Meierink.
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Review of a book authored by Eric-Jan Pleijster and Cees van der Veeken.
Review of a book authored by Eric-Jan Pleijster and Cees van der Veeken.
Review of a book authored by Eric-Jan Pleijster and Cees van der Veeken.
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Review of a book authored by Ingeborg de Roode and Marjan Groot.
Review of a book authored by Ingeborg de Roode and Marjan Groot.
Review of a book authored by Ingeborg de Roode and Marjan Groot.